The Boy Saw A Comet
by heythereanna
Summary: For eighty years, they've kept her from him to protect her from the oldest vampire in history. But when her memories begin to come through the barrier in her mind, Brooke Davis is desperate for answers, one in particular: who is Damon Salvatore?
1. Don't You Forget About Me

**Title: **The Boy Saw A Comet**  
>Author:<strong> heythereanna (Anna)  
><strong>Pairings:<strong> Damon/Brooke centric, other couples included**  
>Summary: <strong>For eighty years, they've kept her from him to protect her from the oldest vampire in history. But when her memories begin to come through the barrier in her mind, Brooke Davis is desperate for answers, one in particular: who is Damon Salvatore? **  
>Rating:<strong> TEEN; Language, Adult Content **  
>Disclaimer: <strong>I own absolutely nothing from OTH or TVD.**  
>Special Thanks: <strong>To my beloved **Chelle** for all of the help and advice for this. I couldn't have gotten back to writing without you.  
><strong>Author's Note: <strong>A few things to be alerted of: Tyler was never turned into a hybrid, Brooke is immortal (you'll find out why later), and Stefan and Damon do not speak.

- - - - - - - X - - - - - - - -

_"Come away with me, Brooke."_

_The words fall from his lips as they lay beneath layers of silken sheets, the moonlight painting shadows upon her porcelain skin. Her ruby red lips are just before his, begging to be kissed, but he refrains as he breathes in her natural scent, the succulent smell of magnolias leaving him senseless. She has a power over him that cannot be surpassed by any mere human that he's ever met before, one that he hasn't felt since he was infatuated with Katherine. It intoxicates him, enthralls him, bewitches him; but most of all, it scares him. She hasn't compelled him into this, into falling in love with her as he so quickly had. And yet, as strange as it was, it was just as involuntary as compulsion. _

_But she just giggles, shaking her head gently as he traces her collarbone. "Damon, don't be silly." She murmurs, and he watches in wonder. She's an angel, her dark brown curls falling around her gorgeous features like a halo upon her head, and he swears that if he had a heartbeat, it'd be skipping every moment he looked upon her. _

_His hands continue to wander her skin, the feeling of it beneath his fingers utterly breathtaking as he looks into her eyes. "I mean it." Damon whispers as she gazes up at him from her placement against his chest._

"_Damon…"_

"_I love you," he whispers once more, and he can almost feel tears choking his voice. "I can't imagine not falling asleep with you in my arms, without you beside me when I wake up, not looking into those beautiful hazel eyes…"_

"_I love you too, but we don't have to go away to do any of that." She protests, her grip on him tightening protectively. "We just stay right here as we have for the last few months, and continue on as we have." _

_Damon closes his eyes, shaking his head. "I'm not ready to lose you, not to him...not when there's so much more to do..."  
><em>

_"Damon..." She trails off.  
><em>

_It hits him like a tsunami as his brow creases, his jaw tightening as well. She doesn't want to leave with him; she doesn't want to ride off into the sunset with him. She just wants to stay here, in the place where she was raised and where she's never left. She wants to be here when he comes, when everything goes to hell and he loses her forever. Or maybe, she just wants to be lost.  
><em>

"_You don't want to go with me." Damon says angrily, pulling away from her._

_But she knows him too well, grabbing onto his arm. Her grasp is firm, but she knows that she can't stop him. If he wanted to, he could break her in half with his strength – the only problem is that he can't even bear the thought of doing such a thing. Slowly, she pulls him back to the bed, getting up on her knees with the sheet wrapped around her as she looks up into his eyes with her innocence._

_Her lips, sweet and soft, press to his with the utmost love, reassuring him of her devotion with every kiss she gives him. His entire body ignites, the cold tendrils of his charred soul suddenly warming as their lips collide. It's the feeling he gets with every touch, with every look, whenever he's within a foot of her. She makes him feel alive, and more importantly, she makes him feel human._

"_I love you more than anything, Damon." She murmurs soothingly as she pulls back ever so slightly, her hand cupping his cheek. He leans into it out of habit, ever so comforted by her touch. "Please don't ever doubt that I do…"_

_"Then why won't you run?" He asks as he holds her close._

_She smiles, running her thumb over his cheek. "Because I'm tired of running from the inevitable, Damon. Eventually, he's going to find me. And when he does..." She pauses, shuddering slightly before looking back at him. "I just...I want to be normal, Damon. I want to live as normal people do."_

_He nods, bowing his head. They had spent almost ten years running. It was a millisecond to him, but to her...it was far longer._

_Her thumb continued to run over his cheek, smiling through her tears that had begun to glisten in her eyes. "Kiss me, Damon."_

_Damon looks up at her. How could he resist such a command, especially from the love of his life. Slowly, he moved his lips towards her, pressing them against hers in the tenderest manner. But her passionate return pulled him into a sweet chasm of need, their tongues battling for dominance as they kissed until their lips were raw - or at least she couldn't breathe anymore._

_"I love you, Brooke..."  
><em>

_His lips were on her neck now, kissing her gently whilst whispers of his devoted love spilled from his lips. She held onto him like he was the very air she breathed, his grip on her tightening. As if she could read his mind, her head fell back against her shoulders, giving him more room for his lips to wander upon her skin. "I'm yours…" She whispers, her hand entangling into his hair as he rears back. _

_Brooke looks into his eyes as she watches the blood flow to them, the veins popping out just as his fangs appear as well. "Be gentle, my love." She whispers, but there's no fear in her gaze as he presses his lips to her neck once more, just before plunging his fangs into her._

Brooke gasps as she awakes, her hand going to her neck as she sits straight up on the bed, panting for air. She can barely breathe as she tries to calm herself down, her eyes immediately checking the room for any possible intrusion. Her boyfriend, who lays beside her, is still, remaining asleep as she pulls on one of his shirts and goes to the bathroom, her body shaking the entire way there.

She looks into the mirror for a moment before splashing some water upon her cheeks, desperate to shake the nightmares that have plagued her for most of her life. But it was only after her eighteenth birthday that the dreams had become a nightly ritual, some kind of biological clock having gone off in her head that said she had to go insane for a little while.

The dreams, as scary as they are, are more confusing that anything. It's not the vampire thing that scares her, she knows the history of Mystic Falls and has been told so many stories of the vicious bloodsuckers that tortured the town for decades. But the part that freaks her out is that it's as if she can see into "Damon's" mind, like she can read his thoughts. Brooke could practically feel the love radiated from him in her dreams, the utmost adoration that he felt for her. Was it even her? It had to be, why else would Damon call the woman Brooke?

The brunette sighed. Maybe she was reading into her dreams too much. Maybe it was just a fantasy.

"Brooke?"

The voice behind her startles her so much that she jumps a few inches, a yelp escaping her lips before she sees who it is.

Tyler Lockwood's arms envelope her like the strongest of barriers, suddenly feeling as nothing on this earth could even come close to hurting her. Brooke smiles softly, turning around in his arms and gazing up at him for a moment.

"It's nothing, Tyler. Just a bad dream." She whispers, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek as he holds her tight, as safe as she could possibly be as her hands ran over his bare back. Her boyfriend of eight months has been so good about her nightmares as of late, even moving her into his very empty mansion so he could "help" her as best he could while her parents were off doing god knows what in whatever country there were in this week. Brooke could only imagine how he felt, given that he had always been her protector, to be as helpless as he was. The dreams were uncontrollable; all he could do was be there.

"Babe, you know you can just wake me up, right?" He murmurs into her hair as she buries her face into his naked chest, closing her eyes as she nuzzles close.

"I know." Brooke says quietly as they hold each other, basking in the safety of his embrace. As he strokes her hair and kisses the top of her head, both actions that have calmed her down since she was a small child, she can't help but smile at how well he knows her.

Slowly but surely, he leads her back to bed, the two of them snuggling beneath the covers as she exhales deeply, relaxing in his arms. Tyler's secure to her, he's safe, he's everything she needs as he holds her close. He's always been that for her, ever since they were children. Tyler's been the only one who's ever been there for her, the only one who's ever cared about her. He's her savior, her protector, her rock. He'd changed his entire world just to be with her, including his ways. He's everything to her, she's everything to him; they're all each other has.

So why was she falling in love with someone she had never ever met?

- - - - - - X - - - - - - - -

Brooke's fast asleep as he rises from their bed for the second time that night, having waiting till she had drifted back into her dreams for him to grab his phone. The dreams had gotten worse over the last few weeks, and he knew exactly what that meant, considering who they were and the heritage that followed their families. They were the founding families, the two of them children of the most prestigious. The Davis, Lockwood and Salvatore family trees had been entwined since the Civil War, and now, their roots were finally showing.

Dialing the all too familiar number, he sighs as he watches her sleep. She looks at peace for the first time in weeks and he knows that this may be one of the last times that she'll have this, given the troubled times that are coming.

"Hello?" The voice on the other line says groggily, and Tyler knows that he's woken up his uncle.

But all he needs to say is two short sentences, and the other line goes dead.

"Meet me at the mansion in ten minutes. They've gotten worse."

His eyes are still on Brooke, watching her nose scrunch up for a moment in her sleep. If the situation weren't as dire as it truly was, he'd probably hang up and wake her up with each and every kiss that he'd plant against her perfect lips. But this wasn't just some little problem, this was much bigger. This was catastrophic.

"How bad are they?"

The voice startles him as he turns his head, his fight or flight reflexes kicking in before he recognizes the all too familiar face of Mason Lockwood climbing in the bedroom's balcony window. He walks out him out of the room, quietly closing the door behind him before the two head downstairs, not wanting to wake Brooke up. She needs her rest right now, a thing which she never seems to get anymore.

As he pours them both a glass of scotch, Tyler sighs, rubbing his face in exhaustion. "She's having them every night now, sometimes twice a night. And they're always about the same thing."

"Damon?"

He growls involuntarily at the name, snarling. "Every single night. We can't keep pretending like she's not going to keep remembering things, not anymore."

Mason sighs, but Tyler's barely paying attention to his friend as Brooke rolls over in her dreams, the moon casting a perfect spotlight upon her features. He feels a pang in his heart as he realizes how much he's been lying to her about everything, closing his eyes and bowing his head.

"I know it's not the best option really, but you could just have Elijah repress her dreams. He did it the first time, after all, and they are basica-"

The idea infuriates him, anger boiling within him. "I am _not_ having her brainwashed. It's because of that stupid ability that she's having these god damn dreams now!" Tyler hisses into his face, grabbing him by the collar.

But the werewolf shoves his hands off like they're nothing, both of their strengths monstrous compared to a mere humans. "Then what are you going to do, Tyler? Have her remember that she's been alive and ageless for the last eighty years? Tell me, how do you plan on explaining to her who she is, or who Damon is for that matter?" Mason angrily hisses in his face, pushing him off. "The werewolves are supposed to protect her. Be her guardians. You weren't supposed to fall for her, dumbass. You never were."

"Keep your voice down." Tyler snaps, grabbing his glass and downing it in an effort to calm him down before listening intently to the sounds of the upstairs, making sure his girlfriend was still asleep. Thanking everything holy and above that she still was, he turns back to Mason, his brown eyes filled with pain as he say the words that he knows will be the death of them both in the end.

"_I can't lose her to him."_

- - - - - - X - - - - - - - -

He's gazing up at the moon while his current conquest lays asleep at his side, icy blue eyes sparkling in the night. She was a waitress at the bar he had stopped in while he was driving through Charleston. Young, impressionable, dimwitted; the kind he loved to manipulate and suck dry.

But the waitress's best trait, by far?

Her resemblance to the woman that he's been searching the entire world for since 1932, since she disappeared without a trace.

Dragging himself from his bed, he stands at the window of his room, sighing as he gazes into the night. He wonders for a moment if she was looking down upon him from the heavens, if she still wondered the same about him. Was she watching over him? Did she stand on nights like these and peer down from her angelic seat upon the clouds, wondering why everything went wrong when everything appeared to be going so right?

He sighs, running a hand through his shaggy black hair as he closes his eyes. He can see her as clear as day in his mind, his brow creasing in pain as he does so. He could imagine those dark tresses of curls splayed across his chest as she curled into him in the night, feel the touch of her lips, run his hands over the graceful curve of her voluptuous body. She had been his world, and now...she was gone

His face turns into a chaotic mess of veins as he remembered the fragrance of such soft and creamy skin, the taste of her blood, the perfection that was his beloved. Breathing deep, he calms himself down, the veins retracting as he did so. She had been able to make them disappear with the touch of her fingers over them, the only one.

And now, she was gone.

"Your obsession with the dead girl is pitiful, Damon."

He turned to face his once comrade, his lips pulling back into a snarl. "You know nothing of what I feel, dear_ Trevor_." He spits out the term like venom, glaring at the vampire he had made with nothing but anger. They haven't been in the same room with each other for over five years, but Damon's very own poltergeist always steps in at the worst moments, as per his new mentor's instructions. And of course, there he was again, right as he was thinking of the woman that his enemy Klaus, as well as Trevor's king, had made sure would disappear forever.

"Don't you have anything better to do?" Damon snaps. "Go kiss Klaus's feet, maybe get staked or have yourself decapitated? I'd love to do it myself, but you aren't worth the effort."

But Trevor simply chuckles, eying the woman in his ex-comrade's bed with an expression that can only be described as amused while he completely avoids his insults.

"I know that this woman appears rather like that of a certain human you once," he pauses, walking closer to Damon until he was close enough to smirk at him in the darkness. "How shall I phrase it, that you were once _in love_ with?"

Before he can let out a victorious laugh, Damon has him pinned up against the wall, choking him at full force with a look of fury in his eyes. "Don't you dare speak of her, not after you were one of the bastards who made sure I could never see her again."

"And what if I told you that she was alive?" Trevor chokes out as his old friend, who then dropped him to the ground without another word from his lips, strangles him.

"I would ask where she was, and how it was possible." Damon hisses as he grabs the vampire by the collar and holds him up against the wall once more. "Considering that you were the one who made sure that he had time to drain her dry."

"And might I say, you have quite a fine taste in your humans. Really exquisite, her taste was. Klaus let me have a taste for bringing her to him." Trevor rambles on, avoiding the topic. "Almost _heavenly_, wouldn't you say?"

Damon slams him against the wall again, the drywall shaking beneath his body. "Enough. To the point, Trevor, before I get tired of your little games and snap that flimsy little neck. And please, take into account that I've just fed and I have absolutely no reservations against tearing your head off."

Trevor gulps, fidgeting in his hands. The fear that filled his eyes doesn't get by Damon as he growls, his grasp on the elder tightening even more so. "You don't understand, old friend, I could be killed for this. You know how precious she is to Klaus, and if he knew she was alive…"

"Do it, or I rip you and Katherine to shreds. I know you've got her somewhere in that castle of yours, and I'm pretty sure I could take her in a fight these days."

The threat of Trevor's beloved girlfriend (as well as Damon's ex-lover from over a hundred years ago) being torn apart is enough for him to open up like a book. He pauses for a moment, causing his current attacker to tighten his grip, before choking out the words Damon's been longing to hear for the last eighty years.

"_Mystic Falls, Virginia."_


	2. This House No Longer Feels Like Home

**Title: **The Boy Saw A Comet**  
>Author:<strong> heythereanna (Anna)  
><strong>Pairings:<strong> Damon/Brooke centric, other couples included**  
>Summary: <strong>For eighty years, they've kept her from him to protect her from the oldest vampire in history. But when her memories begin to come through the barrier in her mind, Brooke Davis is desperate for answers, one in particular: who is Damon Salvatore? **  
>Rating:<strong> TEEN; Language, Adult Content **  
>Disclaimer: <strong>I own absolutely nothing from OTH or TVD.

- - - - - x - - - - - -

As if they had thought it could possibly get any worse, it does.

Brooke's nightmares have become an evening ritual of thrashing about, screaming at the top of her lungs, and violently awaking. It's as if she's become possessed by something demonic, waking with a cold sweat on her brow just before the heart wrenching sobs begin. She doesn't want to dream of faces she's never even known, of a whole _life_ she doesn't even recognize.

But being the oh so stubborn Brooke Davis, she proves quite resilient on Monday morning.

She convinces herself to get out of bed, the fatigue practically dripping off her limbs. It's as if gravity's taking an extra-painful hold on her as she trudges to the shower, dragging her feet the entire way.

Brooke steps in, closing her eyes as the water engulfs her. It's hot, so hot that she can practically feel her skin burning, but she likes it. It's a reminder that she's still here, that she's not trapped in some dream world with vampires or whatever the hell Damon and Stefan, her little conjured up mystery men, were.

But somehow, even though the nightmares are torturous and painful at their best, all Brooke wants to do is sink deeper into them. She wants, maybe even needs, to put the pieces of the puzzle together. There are so much of the dreams that she doesn't understand. So much that she _needs_ to understand.

"Are you sure you want to know, Brooke?"

The voice calls to her as she stands there with her hands pressed to the tile wall of the shower. She knows who it is, her eyes flying open as she looks around for the blue eyed monster that haunted her dreams.

"Damon?" Brooke whispers, his name falling off her lips like a lost prayer.

"How much do you want to know, my love?" The voice echoes against the tile walls, and she turns quickly in the shower to try and see where he was.

She gulps. He's nowhere to be seen.

"_Everything."_ She murmurs breathlessly.

"Then everything is what you shall know."

Brooke opens her mouth to call out to him, but the second she blinks, she's standing in the middle of an antebellum cemetery in God knows where. Her mind is running a million miles a second, trying to absorb everything around her.

But as soon as she sees Damon, all thoughts cease.

He's hypnotizing, beckoning her to him her like a moth to flame with his magnetizing gaze. She can't help but feel her heart rate rise as Damon walks closer and closer to her. By the time he reaches her, she had thought her heart was going to burst through her chest. He holds a power over her that no one else possesses; it thrills her, excites her, enthralls her. But nowhere along the line of her thoughts does it scare her.

"Hello, Brooke." He murmurs as his hand softly cups her cheek.

And she swears up and down on everything she knows that her heart truly does stop when he kisses her.

It's different than any other kiss she's ever had before, much different than with Tyler; it's softer, sweeter, with the utmost passion as his lips moved against hers. It felt as if she had done it for every single day of her life as she kisses him back, her hand resting on his strong chest as she breathes him in. It's something she would have never expected from someone who could transform into a monster with just a snap of his fingers.

It's _human._

They pull back after what seems like eternity, hands slowly sliding down her body as their foreheads rest against each other, savoring the moment. Brooke can't help it, wanting to spend every spare second in her dreams with him. He's the only thing on her mind, and the only thing from her life that just keeps fading away from her when she wants it more than anything else on the Earth.

"God, I've missed you." He whispers against her skin as he presses a soft kiss to her forehead.

"I've missed you." She whispers, and she means every word of it.

As content as she is to just be in his arms, Brooke looks around them. She has absolutely no idea where they are. All she knows is she's a long way from Mystic Falls.

"Wh-where are we?" She stutters, gazing up at him in wonder as his icy blue eyes look out upon the cemetery. There's something strange about his stare, as if he could barely stand to be there.

He takes her hand, weaving their fingers together as he turned to look down at her.

"This is where you died."

- - - - - - x - - - - - -

She's thrashing about as Tyler tries to get a grip on her, trying to keep her still if only for a moment. Her movements are violent, volatile, murderous even. It's like the world around her is attacking her mind and she's trying to fight her way out.

"Brooke!" He yells into her face, trying to wake her.

But all she does is slap him across the face, screaming out, "don't take him away from me!"

The words sting more than the slap does.

- - - - - - x - - - - - -

"_This is where you died."_

The words strike her bluntly, looking up at him with the most confused expression possible. She had died? How was that even possible? She's still there, still breathing, still holding onto his hand.

"I…died?" Brooke asks softly, biting her lower lip as she looks up at him

He nods, pointing to a mausoleum ten or so yards away. "Right there. In front of me."

Brooke's brow furrows, her grip on Damon's hand tightening in fear. "Then how am I alive?"

But suddenly, the hand is gone.

She's standing all by herself in the ghoulish cemetery, tears filling her eyes as she realizes he's left her. Spinning around in circles, lost in every way possible, Brooke cries out for him.

"Damon!" She screams out into the night, searching for her beloved.

Instead, all she sees is a petite blonde come toward her, all smiles and trying to help. Her eyes seem to voice kindness, but from her demeanor Brooke knows that's she up to no good. The look is familiar, the cold hard exterior and the sickly sweet grin. She's not human.

"Is something wrong, dear?" The blonde says in a British accent as she walks up.

But Brooke is wary of her, gulping slightly. "I can't find my…boyfriend."

The word feels strange upon her tongue, but at the same time, so familiar. How was that even possible?

"Awe, well that's too bad." She says with the fakest pout Brooke has ever seen, and she knows she's in trouble. The blonde turns her head, calling out. "Isn't it, Niklaus?"

"But of course, dear Rebekah."

Brooke turns quickly to see another man beside her, stepping back as the horror begins to seep in.

"W-what do you want from me?" She stutters in terror.

Niklaus and the blonde smile, looking at each other and then at the brunette before they speak the words she will never forget.

"_Your blood."_

Immediately, their faces become horrible portraits of veins, watching in her petrified state as their fangs pop out. Brooke lets out a blood curdling scream as she stumbles backwards, running as fast as her body will carry her. But she's no match to the pair of vampires, letting out another helpless cry as the blonde pins her down.

"Oh, did Little Miss Angel fall from heaven again?" Rebekah croons, and her eyes narrow as the vampire swipes a stray hair from Brooke's face. Summing up whatever bravery (or perhaps it was stupidity, she couldn't tell) she has, she spits in the vampire's face, thrashing against her.

"Go to hell, you vampire BITCH!" Brooke yells in her face.

The woman smiles cruelly as she rears back, baring her fangs. "You first."

Her sharpened teeth pierce Brooke's skin like razors as she screams out for Damon once more. But all her eyes find are Niklaus - if that was even his name - as she felt the life draining from her.

He squats down as the blonde pulls back, the brunette feeling faint as she watches her own blood drip from the woman's lips. "Shh, Brookie. You'll be dead soon enough..." Niklaus murmurs, and she whimpers as he pushes a stray hair from her face. Soon, he too bares his fangs.

And as his fangs sink into her skin once more, draining her dry, it all goes black.

- - - - - - x - - - - - -

She's crying now, wailing at the top of her lungs as Tyler attempts to pin her, doing anything and everything that he possibly can to protect her from her dreams. She continues to fight against him, the young werewolf surprised at her strength as she struggles with him.

But the pain that creases her brow is too much for him, finally bellowing out, "YOU CAN'T HAVE HER!" in the most ferocious voice he's ever spoken in his life.

And just like that, Brooke wakes. As her hazel green eyes shoot open she lets out the most tortured scream he's ever heard, the tears continuing to fall down her porcelain cheeks as her sobs begin to sound more like her choking.

He remains there, pinning her as she looks up at him in fear, frozen in his placement. He had never thought that all those years ago, when she had been sent to him like an angel from above, that they would come to this.

Tyler rolls off of her as Brooke's eyes fill with absolute terror, watching painfully as she immediately rose from the bed.

"Brooke!" He calls out, but she's already into the bathroom and locking the door by the time he can think to do anything. For the first time since he met her, he feels like a monster, a complete and utter beast that she couldn't even stand to be around.

And on the other side of that oaken panel, Brooke sinks into a heap of salty tears. Her face sinks into her hands as she goes over every moment of her dream. Her heart aches for Damon, crying out internally for him to save her from all of this madness, from the sharply fanged villains of her mind that plagued her with their hollow glares and vicious bites.

But of course, he would not come. He wouldn't come diving through the window, bust through the door, or even acknowledge that she was losing her mind, because Damon Salvatore was not real.

And because of that, she cries even harder.

- - - - - - x - - - - - -

"_You're smothering me, Tyler! I can't fucking breathe when I'm here!" She screeches, slamming her palm against the wall in her rage before immediately giving herself a mental kick in the head. The wall had been a lot harder than she had thought, and pain rushed to her hand.  
><em>

"_I'm just trying to keep you safe!" He cries out, trying to take her hand and pull her closer to him. It almost feels as if his trying to reach over a dark abyss that had formed between them, one filled with blue eyes and bloody nightmares. He's attempting to bring her back, but all she wants to do is run.  
><em>

_She yanks her hand away from him, her voice rising as she takes a step back from him. "__From _what_? It's not like you can protect me from my own damn mind!"_

_"You don't know that!"_

_She laughs in his face, shaking her head at his naivety of his words. Of course he can't save her. Truth be told, she's not even sure if she can save herself from all of this._

_"Oh grow up, Tyler. You can't stop my dreams. Nobody can."_

_"Stop pushing me away, Brooke! That's all you're fucking doing, and I'm so damn _tired _of it!"_

_His fist impacts with the wall in his rage, putting a heavy dent in the plaster of it. Normally, it would scare the ever loving shit out of her, simply from seeing Tyler's temper go that far. But now, it just annoys her._

_"You're tired?" She'd screamed before walking out of the room and snatching up her bag, fury in her eyes. "Join the goddamn club!"_

That was the fight that had ensued the second Brooke had walked out of the bathroom that morning, one that she was desperately trying to forget as she weaves through the students at Mystic Falls High. Tyler had gotten in her face regarding her dream, as well as making sure she was okay. But she was so, so tired of people asking her that, asking her if she was alright or that she looked tired. Well of course she looked fucking tired; Brooke couldn't even remember the last time she got a full night of uninterrupted sleep.

She sighs at her locker, her eyes landing on a picture of her and Tyler in happier days. They looked so blissed out on each other, like all they needed in this world was the other person in the picture. She can't help but smile softly, her fingers touching the picture. They had been so happy back then, just two kids who were too in love for their own good. Brooke wonders when it all went wrong, when suddenly their love wasn't enough anymore.

His harsh words come back to mind from earlier that morning, causing her hand to drop and clench into a fist. How could he be so infuriated over this, over _dreams_? It isn't like she can control them, although she so desperately wished that she could do just that. They came whenever they wanted, as if they had free passage through her mind.

Silently, she says a prayer that her mind would put a barricade up against the demons as she shuts her locker with a loud clang, resting her head against the cool metal for the moment. Her goal had seemed so simple when she had left this morning, to get through the day attend her few classes and go home. That was all she had wanted to do when she had stepped out the Lockwood manor at six, but now, it seems practically impossible to just make it through first hour.

But was it even home now, Brooke wondered as she steps into her history class. All she and Tyler did was argue over everything, from going out on a weekend to the landmine topic of her nightmares. It wan't just something they could just work through, either. Their fights were cataclysmic, chaotic, violent even, especially that morning. She had wanted to tear his head off, slap him again (this time on purpose), maybe even leave him.

But she can't, she knows that. Tyler was all she had. After all, it wasn't like anyone else was looking to take on her craziness, and the last thing she wanted to do was be alone. They were stuck with each other, and somehow she knows that they both felt that same truth. She was chained to him, trapped at best. There was no way out.

Brooke practically collapses into her seat from her exhaustion, her eyes shutting the second that her head hit the desk. She feels so tired, the deep dark circles beneath her normally hazel eyes presenting that for the world to see. All she wants is just five minutes where she can rest, where she can remember what it felt like to sleep without waking up screaming, where she can live without the weight of all of her problems crushing her like a shoe would an ant. She's so close, drifting off into the blackness of a dremless sleep, and then...

"Brookie!"

The high pitched voice of Caroline Forbes fills her ears, causing a groan to escape her lips. She whimpers, knowing that she isn't going to get any sleep with the peppy blonde in her immediate area. The girls had been best friends since childhood, which was no surprise due to their duty as the co-captains of the Mystic Falls cheer squad. Actually, Brooke and Bonnie were probably the only ones who could actually handle Caroline on a daily basis, besides her boyfriend, Matt. They've all known each other for as long as Brooke can remember; she had even become a return guest to Mrs. Forbes and Mrs. Lockwood's Thanksgiving dinners due to the fact that her parents were always jetting off somewhere exotic for the holidays, sans their daughter whom they never even bothered to visit. Part of her had always thought that both matriarchs just knew that if they didn't invite her, she'd be sitting at home alone binging on ice cream, but the other half simply hoped that the two mothers actually enjoyed her company.

"I'm trying to sleep here..." Brooke mutters in annoyance as she slowly raises her head, wiping at her eyes as Caroline came bounding towards her with Matt in tow. The golden pair are all smiles and giggles as they walk up to her, making her frown even more as she realizes that was how she and Tyler used to be. Now, she can't even talk to him without winding up screaming at him.

"You can sleep when you're dead. We have a bonfire to plan and the Civil War to study!" The blonde squeals in excitement, clapping her hands. Caroline has to be the peppiest girl Brooke had ever met, by far, but now, it it's not as endearing as it usually is.

It's just downright irritating.

Brooke scowls, the urge to slap sense into her best friend overwhelming in that moment, turning to Matt. "Who do I need to kill for giving her sugar, and how many latte's has she had." She says blatantly.

Caroline pouts, looking at her with the puppy dog stare that usually makes her will melt over any issue, but at that time it has absolutely no effect on the crabbiness of the brunette. "I've only had three..." She attests in hopes of redeeming herself.

Matt rubs her back and kisses her forehead, laughing softly as he comforts her. "I know, babe, but maybe we can tone it down on the extra espresso shots next time? For Brooke's sanity?" He says sweetly.

Brooke mouths a silent thank you to him as Caroline nods happily and grabs her bag in a plan induced frenzy, ranting on and on about how the bonfire had to be perfect this year so they could raise all the money that they needed for new cheer leading uniforms.

But Brooke isn't paying attention, not a single bit as she gazes over at Tyler, who was brooding at his desk. He appears to be just as worn out as she is, deathly so, and it kills her to see him like this. She knows the cause of all of this was her stupid dreams that were torturing him, or at least it was part of it, and that notion breaks her heart into a thousand little pieces. The last thing she wants is to hurt the boy who was trying to save her from the world, from everything.

Including herself.

"Brooke? Are you even listening to me?"

Her focus snaps back to Caroline, who had been waving her hand in front of her face in an effort to get her attention for god knows how long.

Brooke smiles weakly, nodding as best as she can. "Yeah, Care. Have Tyler get the kegs, make sure I go shopping for everything...I got it."

The perky blonde stares at her questionably, her eyebrows furrowing as she reaches out and takes Brooke's hand. "Sweetie, what's going on? No offense...but you look like you just got run over by a ten ton freight train." Caroline says frankly, patting her hand reassuringly as a mother would to their child.

"Gee Care, way to sugarcoat it..." Matt mumbles, offering yet anoter sympathetic look to her.

God, she _hates _it when people looked at her like he is at that moment. It's as if she was a poor helpless animal needing someone to scoop it off of the road so it didn't get run over, rather than the brave and bold force of nature that she truly is.

Or at least, the one that she had been.

But she doesn't want to start yet another fight with someone by telling him that if he looked at her one more time like that, she'd slap him upside the head. Brooke just shakes her head and lies through her teeth, not wanted to get anyone else involved in the mess that she's already neck deep in.

"Nothing." She says with a weak smile, running her hand through her hair as she tries to brush of her friend's blatant words. She knows she looks like shit, it had been obvious when she had looked in the mirror that very morning, but hearing it out loud just makes it a lot more real than it had been before.

"I'm just not sleeping well lately." Brooke tries to explain, shrugging as her eyes dart over to Tyler once more. He's staring at her intently, and she _hates_ it. She hates the way she can feel his eyes bearing into her, like he can see straight through the act that she's putting up and he's ready to announce it to the world. For the first time in what seems like forever, she feels afraid of him, but not of him per say.

She's afraid of what he knows, as well as what he's keeping from her.

Caroline doesn't buy it, Brooke can see that, but she doesn't allow any further interrogation, too tired to deal with a Marine style grilling from her friends. Instead, she simply lays her head down again, closing her eyes and shutting out the world. She doesn't want to be here, she doesn't want to be home either; there's no place she really belongs anymore. She's just stuck floating from place to place, attempting to find a spot where she actually feels like she's supposed to be.

She doesn't want to think about it anymore, she decides as tears form in her eyes whilst she hides from everyone in the room. She doesn't want to think about anything anymore, or hurt anymore for that matter. All she wants is to find her way home again, wherever that may be.

- - - - - - x - - - - - -

Tyler spends the period staring at Brooke, or at least a semi-sleeping Brooke. But then again, she can't be sleeping, because she isn't screaming. She isn't waking up like she's coming out of a year long coma, gasping for air and clutching her chest like she's been shot. She isn't reaching out for her dreams, as if begging for them to be real, which always seem to be centered around the man he detests so terribly that all he wants to do was rip his egotistical head off.

Damon Salvatore.

The very name makes his blood boil as Alaric goes on about some battle that had happened near Mystic Falls, his hand clenching his desk so tight that he prays he hasn't bent the metal of it. The anger inside of him is irrevocable, a raging fire that hasn't gone out since that fateful night he first saw her. He had simply known her as "Mason's house guest", until he was told the legend that she was a part of, one much bigger than either of them could have possibly known.

The first time they had ever been properly introduced had been when he was fourteen years old, just barely a werewolf after he had accidentally killed his neighbor Becky Lowalski during a joyriding trip when he'd wrapped his car around a tree. He remembers for a moment how lost he was, how confused he was about who he was now and what it all meant. Everything had begun to change around him, as if his entire world had been thrown into a chaotic spin that just made him want to roar for it to stop, for things to go back to the way they had been. The word "werewolf" only made things even worse, his young mind imagining a violently enraged beast, a monster which he would now become once every month when the full moon rose. But with that monstrosity came the privilege of guarding the thing that the oldest vampire alive wanted more than anything.

Brooke Davis.

_"Tyler, you have to promise me something." Mason said as he and Tyler walked up the path to the Lockwood's old plantation house, his hand on the young boy's shoulder. "You have to swear you'll never tell anyone what I'm about to tell you."_

_Tyler nodded blankly, lifelessly even. He had just gone through his first change the night before, still recuperating from the feeling of every bone in his body shattering to make room for his wolfish transformation. He could still hear them cracking in his mind, the howls ground into his memory from the painful .  
><em>

_"What is it?" He asked with a heavy sigh._

_"Being a Lockwood means power...it means keeping secrets. And this..." Mason paused, opening the door and allowing them both inside. "Is one that you will_ always _protect."_

_Tyler followed his uncle into the house, watching as he called out into the emptiness. His voice echoed off the walls of the empty mansion, sending shivers down his spine. It was so eerie here; he hated coming into the mansion. _

_It was odd, seeing Mason so worried about showing him something. He had always been honest with him - at least, more honest than the rest of his family was.  
><em>

_"I'm in the kitchen!" A voice called back, the sound so sweet that it made Tyler's heart float just from a moment of it. _

_"Since when do you have a girlfriend?" Tyler asked, confused. Mason never had girls at family dinners, so why would one be living with him?_

_Mason laughed, shaking his head. "She's not my girlfriend, Ty. She's..." He paused, beginning to walk to the kitchen. "She's a very good friend."  
><em>

_Eagerly, he walked in the direction of the kitchen with Mason, each step feeling like another step closer to his destiny._

_And then, he saw her._

_She was so beautiful, gliding across the kitchen like she was floating on air. She was the prettiest girl he'd ever seen in his entire life, prettier than any of the girls at his high school. It was like she was...perfection. That was what she was: perfect.  
><em>

_Mason smiled as she walked up to him, handing him a cup of coffee. Tyler couldn't get over the radiance that seemed to flow from her, the room suddenly brighter from her walking in. _

_He turned to Tyler, who was so nervously waiting to know who the woman was. "Tyler, this is Brooke Davis." He took a step forward, placing his hand on the young boy's shoulders. "And you're her protector now, too..."  
><em>

And he had kept his promise to Mason, he had done everything that was asked and more. He had never wanted to fall in love with her, mostly because he knew that it would just complicate everything even more than it already was. But he had anyway, hopelessly so, and somehow she had found the capacity to love him back.

And now, here they were, teetering on the brink of everything that his family had so carefully pieced together falling apart.

He sighs, closing his eyes and rubbing his hand over his face. It was never supposed to go this far. She was never supposed to remember who she was, let alone what she had been to Damon. Elijah had sworn that the wall he had put up all those years ago would never come down, that her memories of her prior life would be neatly tucked and folded away within the depths of her mind like a well hidden secret. It was supposed to keep every little memory of Damon Salvatore and all the hurt that had come to her life because of him locked away so she would never remember it. They were supposed to never come back to her, never.

How could they all have been so terribly wrong?

The bell rings, students rising from their desks. But Tyler stays were he is as Brooke stands up, watching her just as intensely as he had been for the entire class. She's exhausted, the beautiful woman he knows just a fragile little being from her lack of food and sleep. She looks just as lost as he was the day he met her, her hand clutching the side of a desk in order to keep herself from wobbling as she stood up. He can see how hurt she is just from the way she moves, how completely torn between the two worlds she was. It's no longer the graceful stride that seems so effortless, as if she's walking on water and it hadn't even been an issue, but a fatigued shuffle that looks like she's barely making it through without crumpling to the ground in pain.

Her hand rests heavily on the desk as her face goes pale, closing her eyes. She looks like she's about to hurl her guts up, leaning over slightly into Matt as she does so.

He can just barely hear her whisper, "I don't feel well...", before she trails off, mostly because she's collapsing to the floor before he can even process what's happening.

His heart breaks in horror as he watches Matt catch her as fast as he can while her body drops through the air like dead weight, Caroline letting out a shrill scream in surprise. As he feels the urge to protect her, a job which he had filled for so long that it has ben a habit, he flies out of his seat as fast as he can, shoving roughly through the students that were left in the classroom to get to her. They're gathered at the door now, too, circling her like moths to a flame, someone yelling out for their teacher, who had stepped into the hall, as chaos ensues.

"Brooke? Brooke!" Matt yells as he shakes her, trying to wake her up as best as he can.

"Someone call an ambulance!" Tyler roars out to the dumbstruck crowd that has formed around them, who stagger back in fear of him. The anger's broiling inside of him as he looks at them, vultures circling the carnage of their lives. Didn't they have better things to do than this? Didn't they have classes to get to?

He turns around to find Alaric calling 911, their history teacher practically yelling into the phone for an ambulance to come to the school. It's all a blur as he spins around to see Matt trying to wake Brooke up, Caroline bawling her eyes out and the students in a silent state. His hands go to his head as he looks down at her limp body, staggering as tears are forming in his eyes.

She couldn't be dying, right? She couldn't.

It wasn't humanly _possible_.

- - - - - x - - - - - -

Damon swirls the amber liquid in his glass as he sits in a bar somewhere north of Pennsylvania, eying it glittering in the light as he drinks the pain away for a few short moments before he heads back to his car.

He'd set out for New York immediately after he'd driven a stake through Trevor's heart, needing to find out the truth about Brooke's death from someone who had actually been there. He couldn't take the chance that he would go running back to Klaus, that he would tell him where Brooke was. For the safety of both of them, it would have to remain a secret.

Until he had ripped out Klaus's heart and made sure that he was dead this time around; until he had made sure that he and Brooke wouldn't have to run all over the globe just to be safe again.

He had made Trevor tell him where Elijah was holed up, torturing him with vervain until he gave him the information that he needed. Elijah had been there, he had seen her die. He was one of the few people who would actually know how this was possible, how she could actually be alive even after being drained dry. Elijah was the key to finding out who this girl in Mystic Falls really was, and Trevor had finally told him that Elijah was hiding out in upstate New York.

He takes a drink, the whiskey barely even burning his throat as it goes down. He misses that, the sting of the bitter liquor. It had made him feel human, long before he had been turned. The sting was a gentle reminder that he could still feel, that even minor things like that could harm him. And after he was turned, that was something he missed more than anything in the world. The feeling of his humanity.

The feeling that only Brooke could bring back to him with one look of her gorgeous hazel eyes.

He downs the liquid, placing the glass on the bar and raising his hand, motioning for the bartender to refill his glass silently. Its hard, thinking of her. She had meant so much to him, and just as quickly as she had swept in, she was gone. He had spent week after week, month after month, year after year mourning her death. He had drank himself into a stupor, both with blood and with liquor. He had turned off his humanity, or at least he could when there wasn't a reminder of her present.

But then again, that in itself had been nearly impossible. Brooke's memory had been everywhere for him, and even now it prevails above all. He remembers her in the champagne bottle behind the bar, the night he'd met her at a cabaret in Chicago and she had spilled champagne on his suit coming to mind. He remembers her in the white dress the woman beside him was wearing, from when they were in New York and he made her try on a wedding dress, just so he could see how beautiful she would be as a bride. He even remembers her in the song slowly cascading through the air from the old worn out jukebox, the soulful sound of Frank Sinatra's voice filling his ears as "_Always_" played. Of course, back in the 20's, it had been sung at the very cabaret he had met her at by Irving Berlin.

He closes his eyes, escaping into his memories.

_Damon gazes across the room, the sound of Irving Berlin's voice gliding through the room as he nurses a glass of whiskey. He had been searching for his prey for the last hour, attempting to find the most succulent woman in the room to drink dry. The mildly attractive blonde woman dancing with her husband in a white flapper dress looks appetizing, but he had just drank from a blonde earlier that day. Variety, variety, variety. That was what he had learned from Katherine about how to pick his victims. _

_Not to mention, he's looking for a specific someone for the original vampire Klaus, his mentor. One Brooke Davis, who he had been ordered to charm and compel into coming back to Klaus's apartment, whom he would recognize as a green eyed brunette with a locket hanging around her neck, a ruby studded locket that she never let anyone near.  
><em>

_He scans the cabaret's crowd once more, finding it hopeless at that moment. How hard could it be to find one little human? _

_The sudden and abrupt cold temperature that lands upon his skin forces him to pull away from his current task, immediately looking down at his suit and swearing loudly as he realizes that someone's bumped into him and spilled their drink on his brand new tuxedo. _

_"Watch where you're going next time!" Damon hisses violently as he looks up, prepared to compel whoever it was into paying for the rest of his drinks for the rest of the night. _

_But he hadn't seen the spiller of the glass of champagne, immediately regretting what he had said as his eyes collide with the most stunning creature he has ever seen. The stunning creature that he knows that he had been sent to take back to a vampire that wanted her for his own torturous reasons.  
><em>

_She's positively radiant, with hazel eyes that glimmer to near gold in the light and chocolate brown hair that falls in loose curls to her chest. Her lips are ruby red, the same shade as her flapper dress that hangs effortlessly from her curved form. Just as Klaus had said, a silver locket with a ruby embedded in the center of it hangs loosely from her swan like neck. She looks nothing like the other women in the bar, as if she's already so many miles ahead of them that she felt no need to confine to their standards, to all of society's expectations of what the current ideal of a woman was._

_Damon decides right then and there that she, beautiful and majestic she, is a goddess._

_"Excuse me?" She snarls back with just as much venom, feisty as a roaring lion. _

_It only makes him want her more._

_"I apologize," he says with a charming smile, attempting to mend her first impression of him as his mind wanders to daydreams of what her blood would taste like. "I thought that you were some idiot who'd drank too much scotch for his own good, not the most beautiful woman in the room." _

_She smirks at him, as if she's heard it all before. But he wouldn't be surprised if she had. She's the apple of every man in the room's eye, a fact which she seems to recognize._

_He's expecting rejection, maybe even the sting of a slap. But instead, she pleasantly surprises him. __She holds out her hand for him to take, dainty as could be, as if nothing at all had happened. "Now that I see you have at least some self control, your apology is accepted." _

_She smiles, and he swears to everything holy that his heart is beating, that he's actually alive as he takes the porcelain hand and presses it to his lips. _

_And that's when his entire world changes._

_Chills run up his spine as tendrils of heat make their way to his chest, every single inch of his cold skin blossoming with a sensation he hasn't felt since his once sensitive heart pumped its last beat. In a matter of seconds, he feels like everything makes sense, like the world around him is at stand still as he holds onto her hand with wide blue eyes and __lets every last drop of her beauty seep into him. He can't pull his eyes away from her golden irises, fearing that if looked away for even just a moment, she would disappear as fast and unexpected as she come._

_"Well do you have a name, my handsome comrade?" She says with another one of those smiles, one so dazzlingly bright that she seems to light up the entire room. _

_"Damon," he says softly, still in wonder as she allows him to pull her closer to him, his hand still clinging to hers. "Damon Salvatore."  
><em>

_She goes speechless, breathless even, his eyes training hers as he watches the same rush go rushing through her veins like the potent drug ever made. Can she feel it? Can she feel whatever he had? It's as if gravity is no longer the thing holding him to this earth, but her very presence._

_Confusion fills the hazel orbs, her hand resting on his chest, her eyes growing even wider as she feels no heartbeat beneath her fingers._

_But she doesn't scream. She doesn't cry out for help as he so fears she will as her hand rests over his dead and decaying heart. She simply looks up and murmurs in the softest of voices, a voice so sweet he swears his heart could break just from the sound of it. _

_"You have to take me back to him, don't you?" She whispers, tears filling her gaze._

_He knows he's supposed to. He knows that he has orders to bring her back to Klaus and let him use her to release the curse that had been placed upon him centuries and centuries ago. He knows that they've been looking for her for as long as he can remember._

_But for some reason, as he can feel his humanity rise within him and abolish any thoughts of ever letting anyone hurt her, he shakes his head. _

_"No," Damon states firmly, shaking his head once more as his hands rise to her cheeks, cupping them as he wipes away tears. "Because I'm going to protect you, Brooke Davis..."_

He rushes back to reality, unwillingly to say the least, as the bartender yells out that its last call. He savors the end of his drink, just as he savors the end of the memory. He knows that he had fallen in love with her right then and there, before he even knew what she truly was, before they had even shared a kiss. His heart, whatever was left of it, had been in her possession from that moment on. There had been no control over it. He loved her from the moment they locked eyes.

"I'll be loving you always, with a love that true, always..." Damon sings softly to himself as he remembers dancing to the very same song with her that very night. She had curled into his arms, perhaps finding safety in his embrace, as they swung to the music on their own. It wasn't more than an hour later that they were packing all her things and running away together.

_"Always, I'll be loving you..."_

- - - - - x - - - - - -

Brooke wakes up in an extremely uncomfortable hospital bed at Mystic Falls General Hospital, groggily squinting through the florescent light of the room. Her coordination at this point is haphazardous at best, her fingers slipping off the sides of the bed as she uselessly attempts to sit up. Her head thuds painfully, a grimace forming on her lips from the sensation.

God, what had she done? Had she gotten into a car crash or something? Her mind wanders as a nurse comes in to check her blood pressure, a perky blonde nurse who reminds her a lot of Caroline.

"What happened to me?" She asks with a groan, the nurse jumping back in surprise as she realizes that Brooke is indeed awake. "Where's Tyler? She asks in quick succession, looking around frantically for her boyfriend.

The heart monitor's redundant beep begins to grow faster and faster as Brooke continues to freak out over where everyone was, the nurse's eyes going wide in fear. "You have to calm down, Miss Davis! The stress isn't good for you!" She says in a high pitched voice as she dashes up to the numerous machines and presses a few buttons.

She looks like she doesn't know what the hell she's doing, which only worries Brooke more.

Why had they even brought her here? All she remembers was getting up from her desk and feeling a tad light headed; then everything went black, as if someone had draped a cloth over her eyes.

The beeping finally calms as Brooke allows herself to relax, taking shaky breaths as the nurse too begins to breathe again.

"What happened to me?" Brooke repeats, her voice almost a whimper as she speaks. She feels helpless, utterly exhausted as she tries once more to sit up. She feels like a child.

"You were suffering from exhaustion, as well as dehydration. You passed out and knocked your head pretty good...you have a concussion..." The nurse trails on, biting her lower lip as she reaches for Brooke's chart. "They brought you here straight from the high school, you ha-"

She stops as the door opens, revealing a grief stricken Tyler with a cup of coffee big enough to kill an elephant.

Brooke can feel the tears rising in her eyes as his gaze meets hers, immediately reaching out for him as she finds herself no longer caring why she was here, but simply needing to be close to him, to anyone really. All she feels is alone in that moment, alone in all the heartache and all of the pain that's rushing through her system.

He drops the coffee, not even caring as the nurse yelps from the hot liquid spilling on her clean scrubs. She's squabbling about how the coffee's going to stain her uniform, but neither is listening as he literally bolts past her and into Brooke's awaiting arms, her sobs filling in the silence between them.

Strangely, as her boyfriend holds her close, whispering how much he loves her and how scared he had been from the moment she'd fallen to the floor, she doesn't find herself crying from the fear of waking up in the hospital room alone and not knowing what the hell had just happened to her. She's not crying for him, for suddenly finding her salvation as she cuddled into his strong and protective embrace. She's not even crying for the fact that her head is killing her from the concussion and it's pounding so hard it makes her want to scream.

She cries because _he's _not the _him_ she wants, and right now, as she holds onto him and envisions that it's Damon holding her close, she knows one thing, and one thing only.

This was the beginning of the end.


	3. Seven Devils All Around Me

**Title: **The Boy Saw A Comet**  
>Author:<strong> heythereanna (Anna)  
><strong>Pairings:<strong> Damon/Brooke centric, other couples included**.  
>Summary: <strong>For eighty years, they've kept her from him to protect her from the oldest vampire in history. But when her memories begin to come through the barrier in her mind, Brooke Davis is desperate for answers, one in particular: who is Damon Salvatore? **  
>Rating:<strong> TEEN; Language, Adult Content **  
>Disclaimer: <strong>I own absolutely nothing from OTH or TVD.**  
>Special Thanks: <strong>To my beloved **Chelle** for all of the help and advice for this. I couldn't have gotten back to writing without you.  
><strong>Author's Note: <strong>You all sent my heart aflutter with your reviews, and I am so sorry for not updating sooner! Life's been wild, I'll tell you. I love you all!

- - - - - - - X - - - - - - - -

"So, how are you feeling, Brooke?"

The question is simple enough; Brooke knows that. A quick fine, maybe even better and the female doctor that stands at her bedside would be on her merry way. But either answer would be false at the moment as she's just barely woken up for her vivid dreams of Damon. She doesn't bother calling them nightmares anymore, not after four days in Mystic Falls General Hospital for observation, because they're the best part of her day.

All because she gets to be with _him_.

"Tired," Brooke says with a weak smile. She really doesn't know what else to say besides that, at least anything that would sound sane. "But I feel fine."

Lies, lies, lies.

In reality, all she feels is pain. Pain from her head, pain from watching Tyler wait at her bedside like the perfect boyfriend he is, pain for waking up from her dreams. Anything besides that's just as insignificant as day-to-day life had become. It was all a blur of IV's, of blood tests that her doctor said "didn't seem to make any sense", of visitors dropping in to give well wishes for her to get better; they were things that just didn't matter anymore.

Doctor Fell smiles, chipper and peppy as ever, and gives her a curt nod. "I'm glad to hear it..." She says as she flips through her sheets of paper that compile Brooke's medical chart.

Brooke can hear the but in her voice before she even finishes her sentence, impatiently waiting for the other shoe to drop. "But something's still wrong?" She huffs, laying back in her bed and staring up at the ceiling in fear of tears. The last thing she wants is to seem weak right now.

Doctor Fell's smile falls, nodding silently. "Your blood tests…they just don't make any sense and we need..."

Brooke's eyes remain on the ceiling, refusing to look at the doctor as she continues to talk on and on about how the hematologist wanted to do more tests. She probably had said more, but to her it's all a jumble of worthless information as she begins to block out the doctor's voice and escape into her own mind. She has to stay even longer; that's really the only thing that she hears.

"…now the tests are painless but we will need you consent and-"

"Do whatever you need to do." Brooke interrupts, her voice dull and lifeless as her eyes slip shut, hoping that Doctor Fell takes her hint that she wants to be alone.

The doctor thankfully does, nodding silently and exiting her room, shutting the door behind her.

A sigh escapes Brooke's lips as her hands go to her head, running her fingers through her long auburn locks as she feels tears rising in her throat.

"_What's happening to me?"_ She thinks to herself as the television buzzes in the background.

She wants to know what this all means; first the dreams, and now "problems" with her tests? Not to mention the fact that her concussion, which the nurse had thought would have been there for weeks, had healed in a matter of hours. _None_ of this was making any sense to her, and all it does is frustrate her.

Sobs slip from her mouth, pitifully breaking the silence as she crumples up into a little ball and pulls the covers up to her chin. She closes her eyes forcefully, as if shutting out the entire world, and in moments, sleep and Damon Salvatore are waiting for her with open arms to carry her home.

Little does she know that Doctor Meredith Fell stands outside, watching the whole scene as she feels a heavy burden rest upon her heart. The guilt weighs heavily on her shoulders as she watches her with nothing but remorse. She wishes she could just be honest with the young woman.

But then again, she wasn't really young, now was she? Not from what she had been informed of by the mayor's wife last Christmas when Brooke came in after a stumble down the stairs and she had tested her blood for the first time, when the results had been so strange that she had her mind set on calling the CDC and informing them that she had found mutated genes in her fair city.

_"I don't care what you found, Meredith. I _demand _that you do not notify the authorities!" Carol Lockwood hisses in an empty hallway in Mystic Falls General, warily glancing around to make sure that was no one was listening. They had stepped out of the hospital room in order to get some privacy from Brooke and Tyler, who were too busy laughing about how funny she had looked tumbling down the stairs, and to discuss her results from a blood test.  
><em>

_Meredith sneers_, _shaking her head at the mayor's wife as she proceeds to get far away from the nutcase in front of her. "You demand? You're not your husband, Carol. And he doesn't get a say in my work either, regardless of the fact that it's your son's girlfriend!" _

_She moves away, but Carol catches her arm and tugs her into an empty room, a yelp escaping her lips._

_"What are you doing?" The doctor screeches, preparing to yell for security. What had gotten into the Lockwood matriarch?  
><em>

_"I'm protecting this town." Carol snaps, obviously irritated. "And if you send in that blood test you took, you'll be doing the exact opposite of that."_

_"If she has an infectious disease, I have to know." Meredith counters, heading for the door. "Because I will not be the cause of an epi-"_

_"She's not human."_

_The words stop Meredith dead in her tracks, the brunette slowly turning to face Carol as the color fades from her cheeks. Brooke was a vampire? That wasn't possible...she was out during the day, she ate human food, she didn't heal instantly...none of this made sense._

_Her hand drops from the door, gulping slightly as the mayor's wife continues to stare her down. "Well, that explains the anima-"_

_"She's not a vampire, either. Or a werewolf for that matter."_

_To any other doctor, the conversation would have been deemed absolutely insane, ludicrous even. But to two members of the Mystic Falls Council, they knew better. Vampires weren't just long lost legends to the city of Mystic Falls, as the ghost hunters that often roamed the city believed. They were real, and they had once infected the city. _

_Meredith remains confused, locking the door quickly to make sure no one accidentally walked in on their conversation. "Then what is she, exactly?" She asks softly, fear running through her regarding the answer. _

_Carol sits down on the hospital bed, pursing her lips slightly as she folded her hands neatly across her lap. _

_"She's precious to keeping our way of life. Aside from that, I don't know. You'd have to ask my husband..."  
><em>

That had been the beginning of it all, of her curiosities about what Brooke truly was and her questions that came from it. But as soon as she had asked Richard Lockwood three weeks later what the girl was, she had been sucked into their web of lies where protecting those they loved from bloodthirsty vampires and keeping Brooke safe came first, while being honest about what was really going on came last.

"How's she doing?"

The doctor turns to face the direction in which the voice had come from as she rushes back from her flashback, expecting to find Caroline or Matt begging for answers about Brooke. But instead she finds two people that she would have never expected at Brooke's door, had she been just a regular patient.

Mason and Richard Lockwood.

The mayor's brother glances through the door, his fists clenching in response; she guesses it's a protective instinct. The mayor eyes Brooke's room warily, as if he's absolutely petrified of something. Then again, he has every right to be. They all know what she means to this town, what she means to their very existence as a human race. Without her, survival for Mystic Falls, as well as everywhere else, wasn't very likely.

"She's sleeping," Meredith says with a sigh, flipping her chart closed before looking back at the door painfully. Poor Brooke; she can only imagine how confusing this all is for her. "Look, I have rounds to get to an-"

"Why don't we take this to you office, then?" Richard interrupts as politely as he can, but it sounds more like an order than anything, one that she had to obey without question.

She turns her gaze back to the pair, her look weighted with the last year of keeping secrets from her patient as she nods, gracefully walking down the hall and showing them into her office.

"You never said that causing her even more pain would be part of the deal, let alone letting her think that she's going insane." Meredith huffs angrily as she sets Brooke's file down on her desk, not even bothering with waiting for them to sit down before starting on her rant.

"It's for her safety, Mer." Mason gruffly mutters as he shuts the door tightly behind them, but she can tell from the look on his face that he doesn't agree with any of this either. He's just going along with it because it's what he's been told to do.

"Not to mention the town's." Richard adds in pointedly.

Meredith glares at him. Of course the smug son of a bitch had bring up the town's safety and how they just had to put it before Brooke.

"If word were ever to get out and the Salvatore's found out that we were keeping her here...theywould murder everyone who hid her in the first place." The mayor finishes.

Meredith frowns deeply, shaking her head at the situation. "That doesn't make _any_ of this right. Do you have any idea how she must be feeling? How confused she is? Have we forgotten that we're supposed to be protecting her, not stocking up on her blood just so we can save ourselves if something goes wrong?"

"Watch your tongue, Doctor Fell." Richard warns.

"And maybe you should watch your conscience, Richard." Meredith snarls back, getting up from her desk. "Because apparently neither of you fucking has one anymore."

"I can't sit here and listen to this..." Mason says angrily, his chair nearly flying out from under him as he storms out of the room, the two of them still bickering by the time he gets out to the hallway.

The werewolf walks over to Brooke's room, watching her through the glass. She's still sleeping, but his nephew has appeared next to her, looking just as weary as Mason did.

Why couldn't it be easy? Why couldn't he, as much as his brother didn't want him to, pick up the phone and call Elijah? Why couldn't they just let them fix all of this? Were they so afraid of Klaus that they couldn't even call out for help, when this was a time where it was so desperately needed?

Mason looks at her once more, at Tyler, and realizes what he should have long ago.

They can't keep doing this to her anymore. Not after eighty years.

The phone is at his ear before he can even think about it, dialing a number he never wanted to have to call. Emergencies only, he'd said when he'd breezed through town about a year ago; the number was only for do or die situations.

Then again, this counted, right?"

- - - - - - - X - - - - - - - -

_"Tell me where she is, Elijah, or I swear up and down on everything holy that I'll cut you into pieces until I get an answer."_

The words echo in the original's head as Damon chops off one of his fingers with his beloved dagger, a howl of pain escaping his lips as the younger vampire hovers over him, eyes glimmering with a vengeance so dark that it possesses him to the core. His hands reach out for Damon's throat, only meeting the searing burn of vervain dipped ropes, causing to bellow even louder.

"Let me go, Damon!" Elijah roars in hopes of ending the defiance, but he knows it's no use. Damon's been downing vervain all night, despite the horrendous pain, simply to keep himself from being compelled by the original. He has to admit, the villain's brilliance is admirable, a performance which he would had always expected from the eldest Salvatore brother.

Especially when it came down to the one person that made them both weaker than they even had been before.

There was never a doubt in his mind that Damon would find out where he had been hiding out all of these years, that he would sneak up on him and whisk him away to some cavern in God knew where, as he had that night after Elijah had left the opera. It was just _when_ that had always been the question.

"See, I would." Damon muses, sighing dramatically as he takes a step back. He twirls the dagger in his hand, smirking to himself. "But you have been the exact opposite of cooperative today. So my answer," he pauses once more, stabbing the dagger into Elijah's hand and removing it from his arm

"Is no."

The howls of pain escaping from his lips overshadow Damon's latter words, Elijah feeling every ounce of undead life from his hand slip away, grimacing as he silences himself.

"This could have gone a completely different way, Elijah." Damon hisses in his ear, leaning closer to him as if to get as close as he could to the pain.

He's enjoying this; Elijah can tell. Damon's taking in every ounce of his suffering and just breathing it in like it was as natural and as viable as the air that surrounds them. He's become maniacal, Elijah sees; he's become the beast that his elder brother, Klaus, had always imagined that Damon could become. He was a bloodthirsty, revenge driven animal, and as he sits before him, missing appendages and losing skin from the vervain that was dripping upon it, Elijah has a front row seat to the monster that he had helped create.

Then again, if roles were reversed, the original has a feeling that he would doing the exact same thing. Apparently, Brooke Davis had that effect on people.

"Tell me, Damon." Elijah gasps out, spitting out a wad of his blood. He has the nerve, or perhaps the gall, to smile up at his tormenter and laugh in his face."Do you honestly believe that in my thousands of years of life, I have never been tortured? Do you expect me to simply give in to your misdoings and just spill every ounce of information that was trusted upon me? For if you do...you are sorely mistaken."

Damon's lips tighten into a bitter smile, his fingers twirling the dagger once more before turning. He doesn't seem shaken, but Elijah knows what great lengths he's gone through to find out what little he had already discovered about Brooke and her whereabouts.

He also remembers what Brooke had said eighty years ago to him, when he had vowed to keep her safe, and didn't plan on breaking his word.

He simply plans on keeping Damon as far away from her as he can, and he knows just the way to do it.

"Your brother came a few decades ago looking for her, too."

Elijah watches as his parallel freezes in his tracks, the mere mention of his brother chilling him to the core. He could only guess that they hadn't spoken in years, considering that they had come separately, and that was a wound that he so loved to pour salt upon.

"He tortured me as well. He told me he would do anything to find her, that he was willing to die for her if necessary." He continues on, sighing as if it was unimportant. "You two were always so attached to her, weren't you? The brother she was in love with, and the brother that loved her. How touching."

Damon turns to face him, gulping ever so slightly.

"What did you tell him?"

Elijah smirks, leaning back against the chair, reveling in his momentous power.

_"Everything."_

The elder Salvatore's skin goes pale, his eyes near black as he turns back.

"I don't believe you." He says in a shaky voice, and Elijah know he has him in his grasp.

"Do you know what she said to me when I found her, covered in blood in that cemetery?"

The words cut through the air like knives, Elijah watching what little emotion Damon had in his features fall to the ground.

He smirks, gulping deeply as another drop of vervain lands upon his arm.

"She begged me to take her away. And do you what else she said?"

Damon stands in silence, shaking his head, the sudden expression of confusion crossing his cold features. Elijah smirks even more, and he knows he has him cornered.

_"She told me to get her away from you as fast and as far as I could."_

The fury that arises in Damon's eyes is nothing that the original has ever seen the likes of before, as if the very depths of hell have filled his mind at the sound of his words. He watches intensely as the Salvatore brother's fists clench, finding a certain horror filling his soul.

"I told you..." Damon spins the dagger in his hands once more, his voice dangerously angry. "Not to lie to me, and look at you, you just start spinning your cute little words and bring my baby brother into this..."

A snarky laugh escapes the blue eyed vampires lips, smiling vindictively as his looks him in the eyes. "You should have known better than to bring up Stefan, Elijah. Although, you're even dumber for telling me that he was looking for her too, because if he had found her, Brooke would be right next to me."

He pauses once more, vengeance in his eyes. "Because I will _always_ find her. No matter the costs."

He digs the knife into Elijah's chest, the life fade from the original's features with Damon sporting a look that resembled that of satisfaction, a twisted sort of pleasure.

He grins to himself as he watches Elijah's skin go ash with a temporary death, his body shriveling from the knife that was now protruding from his heart.

"It's too bad you had to die, old man." Damon sighs, turning away with a smirk. "I actually liked you, but you see," he pauses once more, his hand going to the long chained locket around his neck, quickly opening it. He gazes down, his eyes meeting his love's picture as he lets out a soft whisper.

_"Nothing will ever keep me from finding her."_

- - - - - - - X - - - - - - - -

_"You have to understand, Tyler, we're trying to protect her..."_

He doesn't like the way that his father and uncle treat him like an underling, like he's not even allowed to know anything about his own girlfriend's well being. They just watch him, keeping tabs on both of them as he waits for her to wake up again. All Brooke ever really does is sleep now, probably because of all of the drugs that they had her on. He couldn't help but wonder what they were; probably vervain, a sedative of some sort, and some saline, just so it looked legitimate. The last thing his father and the council wanted was to have her drained before they could use her for what they needed.

And so Tyler sits at her bedside, holding her hand as she twitches here and there in her slumber. She's quiet for once, not even a whimper escaping the lips he loves so dearly. There's no screaming, so he knows that if Damon's in her head, he's treating her the way he was supposed to.

How crazy did he sound, Tyler wonders as he runs his free hand through his buzz cut hair, for thinking that a vampire was hiding out in her dreams? God, how crazy was _all _of this? It's all one big clusterfuck, one that he had never thought that he would need to be prepared for, and one that he wishes wasn't happening.

The sound of the door makes his eyes raise to the door, the hair raising on the back of his neck out of sheer habit. He'd like to think that it's a wolf thing, but it's not. It's a Brooke Davis kind of thing. Once you were her protector, you were always her protector.

But it's only a nurse, her sweet smile somewhat comforting as she leaves the door open. "Visiting hours are over, Mr. Lockwood. Miss Davis needs her rest."

Tyler's brows furrow in confusion. "I thought that I was classified as family. My parents and uncle are..."

She flips a few papers in the file in her hands, which he's guessing is Brooke's, and shakes her head. "I'm sorry, Mr. Lockwood, but Doctor Fell removed all of you from the family list a few hours ago. That's all that I really know, and we won't be able to have that changed until morning..."

"And so you have to ask me to leave." He mutters in anger, nearly ripping his coat off of the chair. His eyes turn back to Brooke, sighing lightly as he looks back up at the nurse. "Call me if there's any change, I guess." Tyler says before he walks out of the room, not even bothering to say goodbye to her.

It wasn't like she could hear him anyways, so what was the damn point anymore?

But he's in such a blinding fury that he doesn't bother to look across the hall, to the man sitting in the chair with a newspaper, next to Mr. Harvey, who had been in a coma for the last four years.

"Hear that, James? The Tar Heels might actually take the whole tournament this season..." The man says with a small smile, watching as Tyler storms out of the hospital in anger.

It's all coming into focus now, as he watches the nurse go in and prepares to take another rather large bag of Brooke's blood as she fidgets in her sleep. They were keeping her here to stock up on her blood, draining her to keep her weak enough so they could keep her captive here. He wonders for a moment if they were planning on using it for when Klaus finally appeared, just to save their own skins. What utter animals, he thinks as he shakes his head in a fierce rage.

He rises from the chair, setting the newspaper beside James. It's all a clever decoy so he can stay close to Brooke, one that keeps the Lockwood's away from finding out that he'd been there the whole time. They would crucify him if they knew he had been here, burn him alive or throw him in their vampire laden tomb and call it a day. But it isn't like he cares; all that matters is making sure that she's safe, to keep his promise that he had made to her what seems like a moment ago. That's the beauty of his curse, he supposes; eight decades is just a blink in his mind.

He looks either way down the hall, checking for any signs of the wolfish family. He's never been as daring as his older brother; he's always tried his best to stay away from her and not seek her out. He's sworn that it was for her own good, but as he watches the nurse brandish the needle, he wonders if it was all for his own.

"Ma'am?" He asks politely as he walks into the room, startling the poor woman so badly that she nearly stabs Brooke with the needle.

"I'm sorry," he says with a somber smile as he approaches her, "but I'm afraid that I'm going to need you to put that down."

Her eyes go blank as he thievishly taps into her mind, and he cringes. He hates this feeling, he's repulsed by the idea of controlling someone. He feels like the monster he truly believes he is. But this is Brooke, the Brooke he had watched over like a hawk for the last eighty years. There's no boundaries when it comes to the brunette before him. There had never been any.

"Okay." The nurse says in a monotone voice. She sets down the needle, robotic in her movements. "Is there anything else you need from me, sir?"

He digs deeper into her mind as she stands still. She's a mother, a grandmother, just an all around sweet old lady. He knows how confused she'll become, how nothing will make sense and that there's going to be a gaping, empty hole in her memory.

But he does it anyway.

"You're going to forget that you ever saw me, and you're going to tell Doctor Fell that Miss Davis asked to be left alone to sleep for the night."

She nods in her zombie like state, a pang of guilt striking his brooding heart. "I'll leave you two alone then."

He watches her go before he turns back to Brooke, smiling down upon her. Her lips twitch in her sleep, her hair splayed out around her like a halo. It's starting to curl again, just like she used to keep it in the good old days. He still remembers her screaming her head off when he caught her with her hair in rollers and a nightgown, swearing her head off. She had always been a spitfire, after all.

But her face tells him everything he needs to know. Her eyes are sunken into her face, her cheeks gaunt and skin pasty white. They've drained the life out of her - both literally and emotionally - and it's beginning to show.

He sits down beside her, careful to be quiet (she had always been a light sleeper) as he does so. Unable to resist, he takes her hand, lacing her dainty fingers through his own.

_God, has he missed her._

She twitches in her sleep again, her eyes fluttering open as slow as could be. She's groggy at best as her eyes attempt to focus on the figure beside her. Tyler, perhaps? Matt? Maybe even Mason?

No, their hands don't feel like this, this soft and gentle touch that holds her hand in his at this moment. Their hands were rough, seasoned by football and rough play. But these...they felt like they'd held hers for years.

Her brow furrows for a second as she tries to remember. She _knows _these hands; she's felt them before. She knows this person, she feels it in her heart as she raises her free hand to her her eyes, wiping at them in an attempt to clear her vision.

And just like that, she pulls the curtain, and her eyes go wide.

_"Stefan?"_


	4. We Were Born To Die

**Title: **The Boy Saw A Comet**  
>Author:<strong> heythereanna (Anna)  
><strong>Pairings:<strong> Damon/Brooke centric, other couples included**.  
>Summary: <strong>For eighty years, they've kept her from him to protect her from the oldest vampire in history. But when her memories begin to come through the barrier in her mind, Brooke Davis is desperate for answers, one in particular: who is Damon Salvatore? **  
>Rating:<strong> TEEN; Language, Adult Content **  
>Disclaimer: <strong>I own absolutely nothing from OTH or TVD.**  
>Special Thanks: <strong>To my beloved **Chelle** for all of the help and advice for this. I couldn't have gotten back to writing without you.  
><strong>Author's Note: <strong>God, I'm in love with all of the reviews! Thank you all so much, I hope you like the next few chapters!

- - - - - - - X - - - - - - - -

_"Stefan?"  
><em>

His name falls from her lips like a broken prayer, no louder than a whisper as she gazes into his brown eyes with a mixture of confusion and hope. Her hand clutches his, the fear that he would disappear apparent as she watches his lips curl into a gentle, brooding smile.

"Hello, Brooklyn." He says, and Brooke swears that she's heard it a hundred times before.

Brooklyn. Was that her name? Was that was they had called her in this other life that she'd dreamed up in her head? But then again, it really wasn't a dream, now was it? It had all been a reality, every fateful moment, every tortured soul, every whisper from their lips. It had never been fantasies strung together with dreams of a blue eyed man that seemed to control her entire world. They had been memories, snapshots of time that she had once lived.

They had been _real_.

None of it makes a lick of sense as she lays there, holding onto his hand and staring into his eyes. He's actually there, sitting beside her and smiling up at her like he's known her all of his life. It's amazing, this moment of complete clarity that rushes through her like the biggest wave she's ever seen, pumping through her heart, through her mind, through the very curves and caverns of her soul.

"How are you..." Brooke whispers, breathless as she smiles softly. "How are you even _alive_?"

Her words pain him, she can see that as his eyes drop to their hands, jaw hardening with guilt. So heartbreaking are his actions, the look in his eyes. She had once meant the world to him; she could see that now.

"I left you." He murmurs, his free hand wiping at his eyes, which have begun to betray him. "I thought they would protect you, that they would keep you safe. I never thought..." He pauses again, his gaze following the tubes that had been shoved so forcefully into her arms. "I never thought for a moment that they would do this to you..."

Her brow furrows. "Who's they?"

He doesn't answer, shaking his head.

But curiosity creeps up her spine, forcing her question out before she can even think about the words that were coming out of her mouth. She had to know, it isn't just simple inquiry anymore. It's a need, a craving, a desperation. It's everything in that moment, it's been everything since she first saw them in her dreams.

"Is Damon real, too?"

The sound of a fierce knock at the door causes them both to jump, eyes darting to the door as it opened rather quickly, revealing the person she would least expect at the door, her blonde best friend.

Brooke allows herself to relax, sighing lightly as she raises further up in the bed, looking around for intruders as if it was a common occurrence. "Caroline, you need t-"

"Stefan, we have to get out of here. The guards are starting to notice, and your bunny diet makes my compulsion suck." Caroline deadpans, not even looking over at her friend as she leans through the doorframe.

Suddenly Brooke knows that she's not here just to see her.

Caroline knew Stefan, a part of her past that Brooke had only known in her dreams. She had known who she really was, hadn't she? She had lied to her the entire time and just pretended that she didn't know what was going on, that everything was cheerleading and prom and nothing special, when everything was fucking insane. She had _known_ what was going on when she had dropped to the ground in sheer exhaustion only days ago, and she had just screamed and played her little innocent part in this deceiving game.

_She was one of them._

Brooke's eyes turn back to Stefan as he quickly rises from the bed, watching in horror as he begins to pull out her IV's, whimpering from the pain as the needles roughly rip from her skin, the actions so uncharacteristic to him as he seems to be in a feverish frenzy.

"What are you doing?" She asks as tears fill her eyes, the confusion taking over once more. Why, oh why, could she not have more than five seconds where everything made sense and nothing was wrong?

Stefan looks down at her, kneeling slightly as he cups her cheek. The pain is burned in his features again, twisting and tugging at his skin like a marionette string. "I'm so sorry, Brooke." He whispers, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "I'm so sorry that I let this happen, but I'm going to fix it, I'm going to fix _all _of it, but first we have to get you out of here."

"Stefan, tell me what's going on!" Brooke pleads, her hands fisting his shirt as tears fall from her cheeks.

"Stefan!" Caroline hisses from the door, and they both look at her with a flash of anger. "We don't have time for this right now!"

"I'm not going anywhere until someone tells me what's going on!" Brooke says resiliently, mustering up what strength she has to do so. She wants to scream for Tyler, for Mason, for _someone_ who could tell her what in the hell was going on, because nothing makes sense and all she wants to do is cry. She wants someone to save her.

More importantly, she wants _Damon_. She wants him to be the one to pull her out of this miserable room and take her away from all of this, to be right beside her, guiding her to the road that would keep her from more lies.

_"Damon is real, Brooke."_

The words ring through her head as Stefan shakes her slightly, her face pale as snow as a confirmation of sorts appears before her, causing her heart to soar once more. But Stefan isn't paying attention to her anymore, he's just trying to get her out of here, and finally, she understands why.

"It was all real. Klaus, Elijah, Rebekah, they were _all _real, and they still are. If you want me to protect you, if you want me to end all of this, we _have_ to get you out of here before Mason and Tyler get through."

She doesn't speak, silent sobs coursing through her body as tears roll across her skin like tiny raindrops. She shuts her eyes, remembering each and every face that he had just spoken of.

The three people from the cemetery. The three people that had drained her dry and left her to die in the middle of nowhere as she cried out for Damon and begged for someone to save her. Three carnivorous vampires who wanted her dead, and were willing to do anything to get it.

"Do you trust me?" Stefan asks, and Brooke can hear Mason's voice in the hallway, yelling for her at the top of his lungs. She has a split second, maybe, and that's if Caroline can stall her guardian.

The question seems simple enough to her, but it's quite possibly the most complex thing she'll ever decide. Every fiber of her being is telling Brooke to take a leap of faith with him, to believe in him as she did in all of her dreams. But then again, they weren't dreams, she reminded herself once more. They were snapshots of a former life, memories made long before with a foggy resolution. Her mind hadn't been betraying her, it had been trying to _revive_ her, to bring her two cataclysmic worlds together, causing so much confusion that nothing seems certain anymore.

She looks into his eyes, his wide eyes that are begging for her to say yes, the look in Stefan's eyes so fragile. So heartbreaking is the fact that his fear of her saying no is painted across his face, his gaze so loving.

And without out another thought, she says the word that will change her life forever.

_"Yes."_

- - - - - - - X - - - - - - - -

They all get the call when the hospital figures out not moments later that Brooke has mysteriously gone missing, Mason turning into an absolute wreck as he find the open window that she had crawled out of and a nurse who can't remember a thing about the past twenty minutes. It's like a beacon to the council, the kind where they know that everything they've worked so hard for is falling to pieces. They all come running to the Lockwood mansion, and they're all looking for someone to put the blame on.

Unfortunately, that person is Mason Lockwood.

_"You had said that you could protect her, goddammit!"_

_"We placed our trust in you, Mason, and you couldn't even control her!"  
><em>

_"How fucking hard is it to keep an eye on something that thinks it's eighteen year old girl?"  
><em>

_"And why hasn't Elijah been answering our calls?"_

The yelling doesn't cease as Mason sits with his head in his hands, accepting his punishment for all of this. It doesn't matter that she was in Meredith's care, who stands in the corner with a blank expression on her features, or that she had been in an area deemed "secure" by the counsel. It doesn't matter that Elijah hadn't answered the call that he had made at the hospital either, a sign that caused him to determine that Elijah had either been taken or was already dead - or at least as dead as he could be, really. The guardians would fall without him, this would all fall apart without his aid, considering that he was the one who had compelled Brooke in the first place. Their putrid anger now rests squarely upon his shoulders.

He's barely listening, though. He's trying to think of how Brooke could get out of there, unscathed and alive. The drop from the window had been at least twenty, if not thirty feet. She couldn't handle that on her own and just disappear like thin air; they would have found her passed out and healing if she had. All of it's slowly coming together in his head as they yell at him, his eyes shut.

She had help.

He knows it's not his nephew aiding her escape, who sits silently at his father's side with a weary appearance. Tyler's in love with Brooke, it's as clear as day as he looks upon his face, but not enough to take her away from all of this. There were only three men who worshiped her that much to go to the ends of the earth to make her disappear from the council's ever present gaze: one was either dead or missing, the other was last spotted somewhere around Budapest about five years ago, and the third...well, no one really _knew_ where he had ran off to after she had "died". Elijah, Stefan, and Damon. Three men, three vampires, and three souls intertwined with Brooke Davis.

He smiles to himself for a moment in memory, knowing that she herself had told them this would happen when they had planned it all decades before, in this very room, when she was sitting exactly where Tyler was now in all of her goddess like glory as they had argued over how to protect her, all four of them.

_"How is this even supposed to work, Mason?" Brooke murmured, running her hands through her locks of auburn hair. They had been running for the last three weeks, ending up in Mystic Falls in the shelter of his family's home. "Where am I supposed to stay? The tunnels underneath the church? In the caves?"_

_Mason frowned from the head of the table, sighing deeply. "No. You're not staying somewhere that I can't keep an eye on you...that I can't protect you if something goes wrong."  
><em>

_"Then my idea is the only viable option, and y-"  
><em>

_"Absolutely not, Brooke." Stefan interrupted as he clutched her hand, Elijah at her other side. He looked at her with such devotion that Mason could hardly believe that it was Damon that was in love with her, not Stefan. "If you do this...there could be serious repercussions. We don't know how strong your mind is._ I _can't even compel you without having drained someone beforehand, and that's only for a few moments before it all comes back...how could we repress all of it?"__  
><em>

_"With an original." Elijah murmured as he looked over at Brooke, who nodded with a somber smile. He reached to her, brushing a strand of hair away from her eyes affectionately. "That's why you brought me here, isn't it, love?"  
><em>

_She nodded as her hand reached for his, holding onto both of her guardian angels as their very world seemed to be crumbling. "Don't you see? Don't you _all _see? It's the only way to keep Damon safe, to keep all of you safe from Klaus. They think I'm dead, and the next time another doppelganger will come around isn't for thousands of years. They won't be looking for me." _

_Silence held throughout the room like an unseen beast, the thought of what they were deciding upon weighing down on the three of them. Mason had no say in any of it, he knew that. It didn't matter that she would be staying with him, he was insignificant to the two men. Brooke was what mattered the most to both vampires, their eyes focused upon her as she struggled to breathe easy.  
><em>

_"Darling, why don't you sleep on it for tonight. You've been through quite the ordeal...you need the rest." Elijah murmured as he rested his hand on her shoulder, the other still entwined with her hand.  
><em>

_Mason could see the fear in his eyes, the worry. It had only been days since Elijah's own brother had attempted to slaughter her for his own devious purposes, leaving her for dead in the very Baton Rouge cemetery that he had murdered the rest of her family in centuries before. Brooke was still regaining her strength, still reforming the blood that Klaus had drained from her.  
><em>

_But she just smiled through it, shaking her head and patting his hand as if nothing was wrong, taking care of everyone around her. That was who she was, he supposed, that was why they loved her with no bounds and would go to the edge of chaos for her. She was selfless, graceful, beautiful, loving in everything that she did.  
><em>

_She was an angel.  
><em>

_"I want to do this, Elijah." Brooke said softly, her head tilting ever so gently to look at him as she released his hand, cupping his cheek. "I want to protect all of you."  
><em>

_Elijah's eyes slipped shut as he leaned into her touch, the original's eyes filling with tears. How heartbreaking it was to Mason, to watch the two men beg her to be selfish, to not give up everything and anything for him, and to watch her to remain as steadfast and strong as she had been created to be.  
><em>

_"I can't watch you forget who you are, Brooke."  
><em>

_Her head turned to Stefan, who sat quietly at her side, his head hung low and tears dripping down his cheeks.  
><em>

_"If you do this..." Stefan began, shaking his head at the very thought of what they were about to do. "You forget all of it. You won't remember who we are, how any of this happened. You'll forget us, all of us, including Damon, and there's a big chance you'll never remember."  
><em>

_Brooke closed her eyes, inhaling deeply as if she was taking the entire world upon her shoulders. And perhaps she was, as her hazel orbs of light opened and looked to all of them with such resilience that Mason couldn't help but smirk. She was stronger than all of this, stronger than anyone on this earth. The last of her kind, and yet she was as brilliant as could be.  
><em>

_"Someday, I'll remember. When the time comes and Klaus is dead, Elijah will find me, wherever I am, and will reverse all of this." She whispered, turning to Elijah, who couldn't even bear to look into her eyes. "Promise me, Elijah." __  
><em>

_Elijah's eyes remained on the ground, his will shattering. "Brooke-"  
><em>

_"No." She shook her head, her hand slipping beneath his chin and forcing him to look into her eye."Promise me...promise me that you'll compel me." Brooke's voice broke as her eyes grew watery, just barely holding onto what strength she had left to not collapse in front of them.  
><em>

_Tears fell freely as he gazed upon her, reaching for her hands and bringing them to his lips, kissing them gently. It was as if he was saying goodbye to her in that moment, as Stefan's eyes sealed shut in an effort to not believe what was happening really was, whilst he held her there. It was in that moment that Mason could see exactly what Brooke was to him: a sister, a savior, the only thing that had kept him from becoming like the rest of his family. _

_"Promise me." Brooke pleaded, resting her forehead to his as sobs choked her voice and her heart burst with pain. "Promise that you'll come back for me, brother."  
><em>

"Mason, are you even listening to us?"

His brother, Richard, pulls him out of his memories as he looks up from his hands. They're all staring at him like he's gone mad as he just smiles, shaking his head at them. What fools, they were, for trying to control her and keep her hostage from herself, from draining her like a pig and pretending that they were her protectors. They weren't the guardians that they had sworn to be for her eight decades before; they had become worse than the monsters that had been chasing after her in the first place.

"You should all be ashamed of yourselves."

The words ring throughout the room as Mason rises from his seat of shame, unable to help himself from channeling the woman he'd sworn to protect as he looked them all dead in the eyes, making sure that they wouldn't just ignore his words.

"Look at you, pretending like you were _protecting _her." He hisses venomously, grabbing a blood bag off of the table, hefty with the very essence of Brooke's life in it. "You call _this _protecting her?! We're no better than them by doing this, and it has to stop!" He shifts the bag in his hand, watching it swill back and forth in his palm as his anger only raises higher and higher.

What had he done to Brooke? How had he let them do this to the woman that he'd promised to keep safe?

"We were supposed to _protect her!_"

At the end of his words, he hurled the bag at the wall, the council watching in horror as it explodes against the forest green paint, blood spattering everywhere as Mason breathes heavily, his body shaking with anger.

"She deserved better from us." He murmurs as he shakes his head, staggering backwards. "We should have been better for her..."

He can hear the screams of the council as he pushes through the doors, his hands slamming against the wood so heavily that the door cracks beneath his skin, but there's no avail to his anger. Shame creeps up like an old friend as he stalks into the woods like the animal that he is, burning him with its vicious brand as the voices of his family slowly fade into the distance.

How had they come to this point, Mason wonders for a moment as he walks through the evergreen trees. How had they wandered so far from the path distinguished, from the path that they had chosen all those years ago in that very room? Had she known that they would stray, that they would use her for such evil purposes? Had she know all along?

He collapses to his knees as the moon rises, as if to illuminate all of his wrong doings. He feels everything, in that moment, that Brooke must have felt all along: confusion, pain, and utterly lost in the world that he had built around him. He had ruined her, Mason realizes as he hangs his head like the traitorous fool he is for believing that his family would help them, not hinder them, in their pursuit for freedom. He had ruined her for good.

He reaches into his pocket for an attempt at finding Elijah, calling him one last time before giving up on all hope. It rings once, twice, three times, and just before it's about to go to voicemail...

"My dear Mason, how are you?"

The voice isn't anywhere near Elijah's tone, nor is it even his _gender_, but Mason recognizes it immediately, and his reaction is not pleasant.

"Katherine." He grimaces, getting off of his knees and staggering to his feet. "What have you done with Elijah?"

On the other line, Katherine stands before Elijah's body, which is still tired to the chair. "Why is it that you always presume that _I _have done something?" She sighs, prodding him a few times just to make sure that he's actually out and not about to jump out at her like some crazy jack-in-the-box. "Especially since I haven't this time, but someone clearly has."

"Is he alive?"

Katherine looks the original up and down, whose wrists are almost burned off and who's hand is across the room somewhere. "He's been tortured, dismembered, and stabbed. Give him an hour or two and he'll be fine." She mutters as she yanks the dagger out, walking over to Elijah's fridge and pulling out a few blood bags for him. It's not him that I would be worried about. I'd be worried more about Damon coming your way, considering he's the only one with enough rage to do all of this to one little original."_  
><em>

"Come on, Kat. He hasn't lashed out in years you can't just blame the guy fo-"

"Trevor was found staked in Charleston two weeks ago."

The line goes silent as Katherine sets the dagger on the table, recognizing it instantly. It's Damon's, and she knows because she gave it to him for protection the last time she saw him. What was that, 1920? Maybe 1940? She sighs once again, shaking her head. Poor Trevor. He had always served her so well, and now he was dead; all because of some girl Damon _loved_. She sneers. How pitiful.

"How long do you think Elijah's been there for?"

"A week, five days, maybe even less." Katherine muses as she twirls the knife on the table, spinning it around. "Which means you've got even less time before you're tied up and tortured. I'll call when Elijah's awake. In the mean time..."

She can hear Mason sigh on the other end of the line. "Yeah, I know. Get ready to be murdered."

- - - - - - - X - - - - - - - -

They drive in utter silence for what seems like hours, Stefan at the wheel and Brooke huddled in the passenger seat. They don't speak, they don't look at each other; she just sits there, watching the trees fly by and turn into evergreen streaks on a grey canvas. The sky looks like it's about to open up and pour down all hell, lightning striking across the sky and thunder rumbling in the distance. She'd always loved thunderstorms.

Well at least, she had thought that she always had. Now, she wasn't too sure about anything about herself.

Caroline had stayed behind to maintain her role as the distraught best friends who had absolutely no idea what was going on. She had followed dutifully as Stefan carried Brooke at what seemed like the speed of light to her, not daring to meet the brunette's gaze the entire time, and for good reason. Caroline had lied to her from the moment that she met her at cheer camp her freshman year of high school – or had that been a mirage of her mind, too?

Stefan checks over his shoulder constantly for a tail, driving as fast as he could for the first twenty miles or so. Now, he just stares at the road ahead of him, grasping the steering wheel of the old Volkswagen beetle that they rode in. He couldn't look at Brooke, either, as her hazel eyes focus upon him for a few moments. All she sees is fear in him, and it worries her.

"Why are you so afraid of the Lockwoods?" Brooke asks as quietly as can be.

The question rings through the small car like a bullet, breaking down barriers as it ricochets through the quiet air. Brooke doesn't even bother to start a conversation, knowing that there would be some eloquent way that Stefan would make her believe he'd answered the question when he really, truly hadn't. He had that way about him; he always said the right thing at the right time to keep her from arm's length from the answers she so desired.

He doesn't answer right away, glancing over at her with that broody look he wears like it's going out of style. He almost looks ashamed as she watches him attempt to form an answer, brown eyes dark and hands squeezing the wheel a little bit tighter.

"After Mason hid you, he thought it was safe to go to his family for help. He thought…he thought they could protect you better than we could, and so he told their little council about us, about what we had done with you, how valuable you were to all of us."

He pauses, inhaling so deep that it seems he's struggling for air.

"Elijah, if you can remember him, he was already gone. The second you couldn't remember who he was…it was like something inside of him died. He couldn't handle seeing you like that and headed off to France, I think. I stayed behind to make sure everything went according to plan."

"You stayed?" The words fall off of her lips like a broken prayer, hope filling her like a burst of light.

Stefan nods, smiling at her. "I watched over you, made sure I always knew where you were. But when the Lockwood's found out I was a vampire…" He sighs, turning his eyes back to the road. "They tortured me."

Brooke remains quiet, tears filling her eyes at the thought of Stefan being hurt because of her, because of whatever the hell she was. No one deserved that, especially the man who had saved her life what seemed like more than a few times.

"For how long?"

His hands shift on the steering wheel uncomfortably. "Six days. They tied me up with ropes that had been dipped in vervain, bled me dry."

The brunette cringes, shuddering as the image fills her mind like a parasite. "Why…why would they do that to you, when you said Mason was supposed to protect me?"

Stefan shakes his head, smiling somberly as he takes her hand, entwining his with it. The gesture is fond, loving, something between two old friends, and she can't help but feel a bit of hope rise inside of her.

"They wanted to know what you were. Mason didn't have the answers, so they kept him out of the loop. He had nothing to do with it, Brooke. You stayed with him for about forty years, right up until the time that Tyler phased for the first time."

"How old am I, exactly?"

Stefan shrugs, turning onto a back road that led through the woods. "Honestly, I don't know. I don't even know what you are; I just know that you're like us in some ways. You never aged and healed quicker than we even could, but Elijah always had all the answers, you didn't want me to know for my protection."

Brooke's fragile heart sinks slightly, gaze dropping to their hands as she feels the tears well inside of her once more. How smart, that version of her must have been, to have only told one person. Apparently that version of herself, the Brooklyn Davis that Stefan seemed to have known oh so well, had only cared about keeping others safe and hadn't set up a back up plan in case things went wrong. She smiles painfully; that Brooke seemed so much nobler to her, so selfless, so graceful.

"The two of you were always like that, keeping secrets and never letting me in." Stefan says with a wistful smile, looking over at her. "You and Elijah. It was like there was some part of you all that was connected, something that no one could ever take away from you."

She's about to ask him who Elijah is to her when they pull up to an old wrought iron gate, the blackened metal covered in ivy from its age. It looks like one of those scenes from some horror movie Carolyn had made her watch when they had just become friends – if that was what they ever were – as Stefan gets out of the car and rips off the ivy just enough to uncover an ancient lock that holds the entrance shut.

Her eyes slip shut as she remembers this gate, this place, down to the last strand of ivy wrapped around the twists of metal. The memory consumes her, enveloping her like a long lost friend.

_"…Why must you always buy such dreary homes, dear brother?" Brooke said to her friend with a smile, her arm looped through Elijah's as she laughed lightly. Her crimson colored dress floats along the cobblestone path up to the gate, the corseted dress now the fashion of the 1800's, and her long dark hair hung in loose curls around her shoulders. Her lips were ruby red, eyes a deep green, and skin a shade of porcelain that none could match. She was effortlessly graceful, beautiful, stunning. _

_Times were changing, they had to work more to blend in with the world. They were no longer feared as they had been in the Old World, but persecuted for their bloodlines. The people feared, and somehow envied their world of elegance, of beauty, of violence; an impossibly chaotic combination for the human mind. _

_ "I am after all a vampire, Brooke. Aren't we supposed to live in dungeons and castles and what not? Isn't that what those dreadful legends make us out to be?" Elijah said as he lead her up to the gate of the property he had just purchased from another plantation owner. _

_ It was unbelievably stunning in his sanctuary, she couldn't deny it as she gazed upon the arched cherry and apple trees, the blue sky only adding a majestic backdrop to scene. "It's peaceful here, Elijah. I can see why you love it so much." She sighed, her eyes turning to him as a smile appeared at the corners of her eyes. _

_ "I'm glad you enjoy it, considering that it's our home." He said as nonchalantly as he could, his eyes glancing over at her sneakily as he patted her hand lovingly. _

_ She simply shook her head and smiled, leaning her head against his shoulder as they reach the gate. "Always the theatrics with you, hmm?" _

_ "But I haven't even reached the grand finale, sister!" Elijah smirked as he delicately handed her a small black box, a present which she opened giddily._

_ Inside it held a silver locket which had been studded with rubies, engraved inside and out with her favorite flower, a red rose. On the inside, the word "sister" was engraved in their native language._

_ "Elijah, this is far too much!" Brooke exclaimed as he latches it around her neck with a childish smile, her hand resting on the locket like it was her own heart He had always spoiled her, always._

_ "How?" Elijah said with that devilish smirk, pulling out a matching locket from beneath his shirt, although the gems were a deep emerald and the engraving being "brother", and taking it off before pressing the metal into the specially made lock, the confines clicking open like a key. "When I've only given you your way into your home?"_

"I can't figure out the key!"

The words cause her to jump slightly as she climbs out of the beetle and up to Stefan, who waits patiently for her. But his eyes are not on her face, now, but on her locket, which hangs ever so loosely around her neck.

"Do think we have to climb it o-"

"I have the key." Brooke interrupts, gesturing to her neck.

She stands there, struck strangely by his words as his eyes remain on the locket. The handsome vampire gazes upon it as if nothing else matters in the world to him, that the entry through this gate is only possible with its power. Her fingers run across the smooth sterling metal of the necklace, which it feels like she's had for her whole life, or at least what she remembers of it. Hesitantly, her hands nimbly undo the locket, sliding it off of her porcelain skin and walking up to the gate

Like she's done it a hundred times before, Brooke opens the locket and presses the trinket into the grooves of the old steel, her eyes widening as the everything from the rubies to the engraving on the inside of it fitting into perfectly. It pops open like it's just been waiting for them to open the gate after all of this time, and Stefan's familiar broody smile appears on his lips.

"You always did love your theatrics, didn't you, Elijah?" Brooke murmurs to herself with a stolen smile.

"How did you..?"

She swings the gate open, revealing the long cobblestone driveway up to the unkempt manor, a chill running up and down her spine as she gazes upon the stone walled home that she and Elijah had once lived in. "I get bits and pieces from stuff sometimes." Brooke says quietly, shrugging as they walk up to the house. "Elijah made the lock just for us, so no one else could get in. And I wouldn't suggest climbing it." She points to the top, where purple flowers have entwined themselves around each tip of the spindle.

"Vervain." Stefan says with a shake of his head. "Elijah must have had it planted everywhere but the lock so no one else could get in. I wouldn't be surprised if this whole gate was silver to, just to keep the wolves out."

The door to the house opens up effortlessly, a hiss of dust escaping as it creaks open, revealing to her another piece of the puzzle that constitutes her shattered psyche. Marble floors lie beneath their feet, a double staircase of magnanimous proportions before them, and a chandelier covered in cobwebs and dust surround her, enveloping her in a feeling that she had never thought she could find again, not after everything that had happened. It courses through her veins, charging through her body, beating in her heart like a shock to her soul.

She'd come home.


	5. My Body Is A Cage, My Mind Holds The Key

**Title: **The Boy Saw A Comet**  
>Author:<strong> heythereanna (Anna)  
><strong>Pairings:<strong> Damon/Brooke centric, other couples included**.  
>Summary: <strong>For eighty years, they've kept her from him to protect her from the oldest vampire in history. But when her memories begin to come through the barrier in her mind, Brooke Davis is desperate for answers, one in particular: who is Damon Salvatore? **  
>Rating:<strong> TEEN; Language, Adult Content **  
>Disclaimer: <strong>I own absolutely nothing from OTH or TVD.**  
>Special Thanks: <strong>To my beloved **Chelle** for all of the help and advice for this. I couldn't have gotten back to writing without you.  
><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Thank you all so much for reviewing and for your messages! They only boost my muse, so the more you review, the more I post!

- - - - - - - X - - - - - - - -

The next few days are nothing short of chaotic for Mason and Tyler, to say the least. In mere moments, they have gone from the golden children of their beloved council to the bane of their existence, possible traitors even. Their loyalty to their family, to their world, to their breed is questioned, their faith in Brooke being the basis for it.

Tyler gets off with a slap on the wrist, a mere stern talking to by the elders and his precious convertible taken away by his parents, as well as exclusion from council matters until the situation is "rectified", as his father so eloquently puts it. They figure he was just in love with her, that his teenage heart let her foolishly use and abuse him.

Mason, on the other hand, is not so tragically lucky.

_"Exile?"_ He shouts at a dangerous volume, his seat in front of the council suddenly strangely uncomfortable. Pins and needles shoot through his spine, a warning of his anger's rise.

"Relocation," Richard says cooly with a repugnant smirk. "It's a completely different word, brother."

"With the same fucking meaning, _brother_." Mason venomously snarls, his skin turning hot with rage. It takes all of the strength in his body not to lunge over the table and rip the prick's heart out of his chest, knowing very well with this is all about. They had always been pitted against each other, and now seems to be the moment that Richard was choosing to take the title of favorite from the council. How juvenile of him, to put their rivalry above the task at hand. "How dare you, after everything that I've done for this council!"

"Perhaps you have done too much." Another council member sneers. "Your outburst over the creature should be enough proof of that."

"Brooke."

Heads turn as Carol Lockwood speaks up amongst the high and mighty scoundrels that line the walls of the family study, glaring at all of them. "Her name is _Brooke_, not "the creature". We've all met her, all loved her, and there isn't a damned thing any of us wouldn't have done for her after everything that we've put her through."

"Carol-" Richard begins, the scorn dripping from her name.

"Shut up, _Dick._" Carol snaps angrily, her blue eyes a fiery shade. "Some of us here actually have a soul."

"Regardless, Carol, it could be argued that you, Mason, have grown to care for her far too much." Bill Forbes says with a disapproving glare. "You must be removed from your placement in the council and as her guard. We expect you to return to Los Angeles in order for us to regain control over her."

"Not to mention, you'll be safe from the Salvatore's." Richard muses, tapping his finger against his chin. "After all, the two of them are out for your head after keeping their precious blood bag from them."

"_Damon_ is out for all of us for what we've done to her, not Stefan! Every single one of you has a fucking bullseye on your back from him." Mason growls, low and fierce. "He wants the whole council dead, not just me. This whole clusterfuck wasn't even my goddamn fault!"

"You brought her to us."

"Because I though that you would protect her, not treat her like a blood bank for your own personal science experiments!" Mason defends, standing up from his seat simply so he wouldn't crush the oak armrests with his clenched fists. "I knew what she meant to the Salvatore's, to Elijah, even to _him_. They _trusted _me, and I stupidly put my faith in you because you were my family!"

"It was the ri-"

"Don't you _dare_ say it was the right thing when you nearly killed her!"

His animalistic roar silences the council to a deafening amount before Mason storms out, kicking in the already broken door so hard that the two panels fly off their hinges, crashing into wall. While Carol wear a bemused smile, Richard is furious, nearly shaking in his anger.

"Follow him." He commands, looking directly at his son, who cowers in the corner like the child that he truly is. "Find him, find her, and bring them both back here so I can wring both of their necks!"

Carol nearly laughs. Richard looks like a child screaming for someone to bring his lollipop back for him when it wasn't even his in the first place, his face nearly purple with frustration.

"Dad-" Tyler starts to plead, the cleverly constructed excuse about how he wasn't strong enough to do so just on the tip of his tongue, but the gavel like slam of his father's fist on the table quiets him immediately.

"I don't _care_. I don't fucking care if you _loved _her, I don't care if you don't want to. You will do this, or you will _not_ come home!" Richard screams, pounding his fist on the table once more.

_"BRING HER BACK!"_

- - - - - - - X - - - - - - - -

Memories, carefully kept illusions of what the past had once seemed to be fill his mind as Damon's perfectly kept 1967 Ford mustang rolls through the streets of Mystic Falls like a tragically awaited ghost. He's not covert, as he knows his brother had been, not a spy hiding in the shadows of the small town that he once recalled as home. He's as loud as the silver muffler of his car, blue eyes skating back and forth across the streets as the whole world seems to stop in a moment. The sidewalks slip away into green pastures, the pavement beneath the mustang's wheels turning to dirt, the women in their modern clothing turning to southern belles with painfully tight whalebone corsets and all.

The sound of a blaring horn from behind him wakes him from his slip in reality, glaring in his rear view mirror at the douchebag in his black Lincoln, who so stupidly gives him the bird. He reigns in his anger and simply goes through the light, but not before he spots a familiar face.

Mason Lockwood bolts out into the woods like a bat out of hell as Damon drives past, the younger Lockwood - what was his name, Tyson? Tyrone? - trotted after him like a dog on the elder's heels. He smirks at his own joke as he parks the car in front of the manor, knowing that his dear friend Richard would get the chills, and prepares to chase after the two Lockwoods.

That is, until he hears what the young werewolf is calling out to Mason. Muffled yells fill his ears, but it doesn't cause his jealousy to keep itself in control, a little green monster suddenly appearing upon Damon's back as he listens into their conversation.

"...I can help you find her, Mason! She trusts me, she thinks that I love her!" Tyler yells after him as he chases after his uncle, barely keeping up with him as his uncle races through the pine trees. "I can get her back!"

Mason stops dead in his tracks, grabbing his nephew by the collar and slamming him against the nearest tree, causing the earth to shake as he feels every impulse to rip Tyler's head off course through his body.

"You don't get it, do you? You're just a lackey, a fucking _pet_ to your father." He slams him once more against the tree for good measure. "And don't bother lying, you fucking sack of shit. You _loved_ her, ha! We _all_ have, everyone that protects her does!" Mason screams as he throws Tyler to the ground like he's nothing more than dead weight, heaving a heartache filled breath as he turns to walk away.

"Mason Lockwood, a sap. Who could have known, when all he seemed to be to the world was a traitorous dog?"

Mason's blood runs ice cold as he hears the one voice that had tortured his nightmares for decades, gulping down the guilt and remorse that fills him as he can _smell_ the dead heart oh so close to them. He doesn't even need to turn around to know who it is; he had known this was coming, his impending death looming overhead like a dark cloud over a sunrise.

And yet, with all the pride and strength that he can muster, he turns around to face his fate, accepting the fact that his heart was about to be ripped out.

Damon Salvatore stares him down like a demon that's dragged himself back up from the depths of hell, every drop of vengeance spilling from his stare. He's got Tyler by the throat, holding him high for the whole world to see as his grasp keeps the young Lockwood trapped, gasping for air and feebly pawing at the vampire's arm. They both know it's no use as their eyes meet, blue on blue, as the triumphant bloodsucker prepares to snap his nephew's neck.

"I was wondering when you'd show up." Mason barely gets out as he struggles for air, his heart pounding in his chest as Damon takes a step closer, watching as Tyler begins to black out. "You're problem's with me, Salvatore. Not him."

"Au contraire, _Lockwood_." He spits the word out like it's garbage, his grip on Tyler's windpipe tightening just enough for the kid to squeak out a plead. "He touched her. He's thought that he could _love _her." Damon takes another step closer, the danger in his eyes veering to insane. "And you _took_ her from me."

"She went willingly." Mason snarls back, immediately regretting it as the vampire's eyes turn dark with revenge. "She begged for us to take away her memories, even if it was just to protect you and your stupid brother. He's cost us everything, I'll have you fuckin' know. If he would have just stayed away from her, we'd all be fine and you'd still think she was a rotting corpse."

"You watch your tongue, you worthless dog, or I'll snap your precious nephew's neck like a fucking toothpick." Damon growls like some sort of animal. "I'll bind his stupid ass up with some wolfsbane. Rip his heart out just for kicks. Maybe even feed on him a little. Sounds like a fantastic party to me."

"He's a child, Damon!" Mason begs, blue eyes filled with concern. "He didn't take her from you, _I _did. He fell in love with her, and..." He cowers like a child with his hand caught in the cookie jar, refraining from sharing his feelings with the man who just wanted him dead for touching her, let alone loving her. "Tyler's just a boy, Damon. He never knew that she would remember..."

"That she would remember what, Mason?" Damon hisses, bringing Tyler down to his level and looking him in the eye. "That she wasn't your property, that she didn't belong with dogs, or her figure out that it was her own _mind _that you took from her?"

He releases his grip on Tyler, throwing him to the ground and stomping on his chest, the younger Lockwood letting out a howl of pain as he was pinned once more.

"She was never yours, you insignificant little child." Damon growls, cracking a rib or two as he presses harder, allowing Tyler to scream in anguish. "She doesn't belong to anyone, and I'm the only person that she'll ever love. Get that through your head, or I'll rip your head off. We clear, mutt?"

Tyler nods vehemently, the pain blinding as Damon breaks yet another rib.

"Damon!" Mason yells out, fists clenched. He knows better than to take the elder Salvatore in a fight, but that doesn't stop his anger from boiling.

"Yeah, yeah. Let the twirp go, I get it." He releases Tyler, quickly sprinting towards Mason and forcing him against a tree.

"Did you touch her?" Damon asks, his arm crushing Mason's throat. "Huh? You take advantage of her too, like the rest of her family? Drink her blood, get high off of it, and add a few years on to your miserable existence? Or did you just fall in love with her and pretend like she didn't notice?"

"She...never...knew..." Mason chokes out, his hands clasping his arms. "Kept...quiet...protected..."

"You didn't protect shit, wolf boy." He sneers before smashing his windpipe to pieces with malice, eyes gleaming with satisfaction, watching Mason to collapse to the ground just like his nephew before walking over to Tyler.

"Stay out of my way, little puppy, and tell your big bad wolf of a daddy that I'm coming for him, and that when I find him I'll rip his black fucking heart out." Damon whispers into his ear just before he snaps Tyler's neck, knowing that they'll both wake up in a few hours with just a bad headache.

But _fuck, _did it feel good to be back in town.

- - - - - - - X - - - - - - - -

It's quiet in her new home, Brooke finds out during the days after her escape. Stefan busies himself with tidying everything up in an obsessive manner, ranging from moving all the furniture back to the way it was to wiping every inch of the mansion free of dust. She supposes it's his way of attempting to bring her back, assuming that he was trying to resurrect the memories trapped deep within her mind. It's a noble thought, she just doesn't know if it will truly work.

Brooke, on the other hand, walks around the mansion like a ghost of some sorts, desperately waiting for a memory to burst into her mind. The framework of the entire house becomes imprinted in her mind once more, finding solace in the rather large library built on the lower level. The stained glass windows that line the study allow the light to seep in a glorious fashion as she snuggles into the gigantic leather couch that Stefan had delivered a few days prior, the old one having been far too musty to be livable. Beneath her cashmere blanket, she gazes upon the peaceful deeps of the lake, hazel eyes misty with memories as she loses herself in them for a moment, what little fractures she has collected of them at least.

_"Do you ever dream of being human again?" Brooke mused as she cuddled into Damon's strong and protective embrace on the hammock, her head resting on his chest as the summer sun beat down upon them. _

_His eyes wandered along her body, taking in the way her white sundress hung ever so gently on her curves, chestnut curls in ringlets as she smiled up at him. She was truly the epitome of perfection as she laid on his chest._

_Damon's hand reached up to her dimples, tracing them lovingly while his other hand ran up and down the subtle lean of her back, toying with the lace fabric. "Sometimes." He admitted, his blue eyes darkening. "But without immortality, we wouldn't have forever with each other. I wouldn't give that up just to have a beating heart, not when you make me feel the way I do."_

_"Forever is a long, long time, my love. Wouldn't you grow tired of me?" Brooke whispered, her hand resting on his chest as he pressed a kiss to her forehead._

_"Absolutely not, in fact it still wouldn't long enough for me to hold you in my arms." Damon murmured against her hair, smiling down as her gaze turned up to him._

_"Always the romantic, aren't you?" She teased, running her thumb along his chin._

_"Only for you, Brooke." He whispered, cupping her cheek before he leaned in for a deep kiss. "Only for you..."_

"Brooke?"

Her head turns at the sound of Stefan's voice, only to remain in her lapse of reality, finding her handsome comrade in a penguin-esque tuxedo with his hair slicked back. Brooke's brow creases, blinking and rubbing her eyes in an effort to regain her grasp on reality, but to no avail, all she sees is him.

"Are you alright?" 1920's Stefan asks with a confused stare.

She blinks again, and just like that, regular Stefan is back in his jeans and a button up with concerned eyes. He swoops to her side like the guardian angel he is, arms around her as she begins to collapse into tears, her lower lip trembling dangerously.

"Brooklyn, tell me what's going on..."

"Don't call me that!" Brooke chokes out as she lurches away from him. "My name is _Brooke_! Not Brooklyn, not Brookie, _Brooke!"_

"Brooke, you have to cal-"

"Don't tell me to calm down!" She sobs out, pulling the blanket closer to her body. "Don't tell me that when everything I know is literally falling apart!"

Brooke blinks again, once, twice, three times while the tears begin to fall, and he shifts back and forth through time like some sort of lunatic metamorphosis. Her mind feels like it's spinning, her hands flying to her head as she screams for some sort of relief, clasping at her hair so tight that Stefan swears she's hell bent on tearing it out. Wordless shrieking bounces through the halls of the house as Stefan tries to calm her down, doing everything he possibly can as he tries to remain calm himself.

"Brooke, you're here!" Stefan says as he cups her cheeks, tears in his eyes as he strokes the tears off of her cheeks. "You're home, you're here, you're with me, and everything's going to...to..."

He can't find words as her howling finally stops, her eyes sealed shut as he runs his hands over her head, trying to find a way for her to just breathe easy. He cradles her in his arms, rocks her back and forth like a child as she struggles with her own mind, pressing gentle kisses to her forehead as he holds her close. He's speechless as she breaks down in his arms, and so he does the only thing he knows that will soothe the Brooke that he knows.

He holds her in his arms, lets his heartbroken tears slip down his cheeks silently, and tells her exactly what she needs to hear, even though it breaks his heart to say it.

_"He's going to find you, Brooke. He's going to come back to you, and everything's going to be alright."_

Stefan holds her until she falls asleep quickly, something that's been happening quite a lot lately, drifting away in her dreams to slip back into his brother's arms, exactly the opposite of where he wishes she would be. He carries her to bed as tears slide down his brooding features, tucks her in, kisses her forehead, tells her it'll all be okay one last time, shuts her door, and walks calmly to the study, and all alone, he falls apart.

_She sat in the study, a mug of chamomile tea in her hands as she looked out at the lake. Today was the day, the day that he would lose her forever, the day that they were going to take her mind away from her. They had waited too long already, the brunette having grown restless and uneasy with the fact that she had not said goodbye to her lover. A formal goodbye, at least, one which didn't involve her being dragged away by a pack of vampires that just wanted to bleed her dry for their own pleasure._

_Stefan watched her from the doorway, observing her for what seemed like the millionth moment. He was trying to memorize her, he supposed, attempting to imprint everything about her in his mind before they let her forget them. Her chestnut locks hung carefree around her features, curling gently against her cheeks, hazel eyes overlooking the lake as she remained curled up in her nightgown and her robe. She was treasuring these last moments, he guessed, before she looked over at him with that all knowing smile he loved._

_"You brood far too much for my liking, Stefan." Brooke said with a small, serene smile as she turned her eyes to the skyline, the sun that hung so freely in the sky making her light up like the orb itself. She was radiant, a goddess above all women._

_"But if I did not brood, who would?" Stefan responded, running his hand through his disheveled hair. His slacks hung from his hips, shirt unbuttoned and undershirt showing. He hadn't responded well to the decision, to say the least. The drained girl from the bar he had visited the night prior gave enough visage of that from her position in the women's bathroom; he would have to remember to dispose of bodies more "properly", as Elijah put it, the next time he accidentally killed someone._

_"People who have reasons to, I suppose." She mused, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "Perhaps the woman from last night? I can smell her on you, you know."_

_He cursed her hypersensitive senses as he walked into the room, lazily slouching beside her. "It was an accident, I was...upset."_

_"I know, sweetheart." Brooke said as she gently took his hand, her expression turning somber. "I know this hasn't exactly been easy for you, per say, but soon you'll be better." She offered a weak smile._

_His eyes darkened, brooding as he slips his fingers through hers. Her skin was so soft, so fragile, gently caressing his calloused hands like silken sheets. How was he to go on without her, without his Brooke, his rock, his very reason for coming back from his ripper days? And how could she be so calm when she was about to give up everything she loved? _

_"I'm afraid it won't." Stefan confided, gazing into her eyes as she turned to look at him. "Rather, I know that it won't."_

_"You're so dramatic, Stefan. As if your world would stop without me." She scoffed, a childish smile playing upon the curve of her lips. _

_How he dreamed of curving his lips against that very curve, of kissing her as deeply as he'd seen his brother do oh so many times. How he longed for her, dreamed of her, ached for her. She was always there, with that kind gaze and compassionate touch. She was a flame that he couldn't help but dare to sweep his fingers through, the poisonous and traitorous apple tempting him from the heavens above him, the end of the rainbow that no one could ever seem to reach. She was a comet, and he was her scientist, simply waiting for it to reappear in his life every millenia, a rare and intoxicating creature that only came about on a summers eve with a solar eclipse. She was the forbidden fruit, and he was the traitor who dared to reach for her. She was everything to him, and she didn't even have an idea of it._

_"It would." He whispered softly, clutching her hand. "Brooke..."_

_Her eyes focused upon him lovingly, cupping his cheek with her free hand. "Stefan, you're going to be fine without me. You'll go on as you always have, and soon, I'll just be a mem-"_

_"Don't say that..." Stefan pleaded, his hand still holding hers for dear life as he leaned into her touch like a willow swaying in the breeze. "I'll never forget you."_

_"Stefan..." She began, her voice wavering. Her eyes watered with salty tears as her thumb gently stroked his cheek with the utmost love. How could she not see? How could she not know? _

_His eyes met hers, longing with the heartbreak that he had faced for the last decade of his life. He had to say it, he had to tell her before she forgot everything that she had ever known. Her hazel eyes watched him intently, porcelain skin streaked with tears. She was even beautiful when she cried; how fitting, it was, since all of her tears were shed for those around her. _

_He couldn't hold it in any longer, the words bursting out of him like a proclamation that the whole world had to know, that every soul upon the face of the earth had to witness._

_And yet he took the words from her as he cupped both of her cheeks, pressing his lips to hers with everything he had before she could say anything to make him think he couldn't, every emotion pouring out of him as he opened up to her in a way that he had never known.  
><em>

_To his surprise, her hands found his, embracing him back as gently as possible as their lips moved against each other, Stefan savoring every moment in fear that he would never feel this again, this absolute perfection. Lips like heaven, she had.  
><em>

_She pulled away from him slightly, tears embedded in the corners of the hazel eyes that he loved so dearly. Her lips were parted, barely able to speak, but no words were needed as he simply smiled as brushed her tears away gently as they fell.  
><em>

_"I just needed you to know, before..." Stefan began, but she pressed a finger to his lips.  
><em>

_"I would like to watch the sun set one last time." She murmured, pointedly avoiding the subject, snuggling into his side as if nothing had happened at all, as if the world hadn't just completely flipped upside down. "Will you stay with me?" She asked softly, daringly even.  
><em>

_He smiled, trailing his fingers through her hair as they both looked out the bay windows toward the horizon.  
><em>

_"Till the end, my dear. Till the very end."  
><em>

He knows he's losing her, that the walls are beginning to come down and that there's no time for pride or envy to get in the way. He knows the costs of what they're doing, what he's doing, and what it will probably cost him. Damon'll have his head on a platter in no time, but Stefan doesn't bother thinking about it as he calls the one person he had never thought he'd need in a time like this.

"Mason..." Stefan says as the voicemail beeps, his voice ragged and hoarse as tears pour down his cheeks like rain. "I know we swore we'd never contact each other unless it was a secure line and I know you're probably in deep shit, but...it's really bad." He chokes out a sob, shaking his head as he tries to make it all go away, as he tries to turn off his humanity. But the thought of Brooke won't let him, grasping at the tethers of his mind and keeping him in line. "She's dying, Mason, and I can't stop it." He heaves one last sigh, resting his head against the door as he sinks to the ground, his heart shattering in his chest.

"We need to have her remember everything, Mason. We need to bring him back to her, or we'll all lose her forever."

- - - - - - - X - - - - - - - -_  
><em>

Katherine's surprised at how long it takes for Elijah to wake up this time around, casually making herself at home as she waits for his limbs to reattach and all the gruesome details of what went on with a original re-resurrection. It's not until the third day, when she finally gets more than a few drops of blood down his throat, that he wakes up.

And unfortunately for her, he is _anything_ but a morning person when he does.

She's watching some reality television show, scoffing at the lengths that people nowadays will go to for fame, when he silently rises from the chair he had been bound to like a prisoner, a captive in his own home. She doesn't hear him, or ignores the fact that she can, as he drains the rest of the blood bag and rapidly moves before her, leaving her utterly speechless.

"Katerina." Elijah growls like a beast unchained, his hands quickly encircling her neck like miniature vices before she can even get out an excuse for why she's in his apartment.

"What a surprise, to see you here after your ex-lover ties me up like a rag doll because he's trying to find my _sister_." He hisses in her face, his own slowly revitalizing as it remains an ashen gray. "Who we both know can't remember a damn thing about all of us."

The vampiress struggles with speech, clawing at his hands uselessly as she sputters out a measly, feeble and completely un-Katherine, "walls...breaking..."

With those two words, which seemed so simple but were so utterly confounding in their entirety, Elijah drops her to the ground with a resounding thud, watching as her body goes barely limp for just a second, recoiling from the sudden attack.

"What do you mean?" He interrogates, wishing that he could wrap his hands around her throat and squeeze the life out of her beautiful body once and for all. She still looks amazing, of course, and he hates her for it, simply because he doesn't want to feel the rising heat from looking into her chocolate eyes.

"Well, aren't we being nice now that you know I have information?" Katherine snaps, rubbing her neck as she glares up at him, chided by his actions. "Same old Elijah; too _obsessed_ with your pretty little half sister to give a damn about anyone else. Perhaps that's why Klaus wants to get rid of her so badly."

The shot earns back her previous spot, the original pinning her against the wall by her wrists, their bodies too close for his own comfort. The devilish woman always had a way of doing this to him, of riling him up for no reason at all. But at this moment, there truly was a reason, that meaning being Brooke.

"She died?" He asks softly, tears nearly prickling at the corners of his eyes. They both knew what that would mean, what she would become, what she could create if she passed on and arose once more, a completely new being. "She's...?"

"No." Katherine says firmly, disappointed. "Although I would have rather she did."

"Mind your words, Katerina, and remember who you're speaking to." Elijah snarls in her face, his protective instincts kicking in at a rapid pace. "Don't make me compel you; you're always so angry when I do."

She sighs like a bored child, wriggling at the restraint he's created with his hands. She smirks, running her dainty fingers over his knuckles as she kinks her eyebrow, tilting her head ever so slightly. "Pinning me? Elijah, darling, you'll have to buy me dinner first." Katherine says snarkily, her foot quickly kicking him off of her before racing up the stairs to his apartment, watching giddily as he flew against the countertop.

He curses under his breath as he stands up from the wreckage, sweeping the dust off of his already blood covered suit. "That's a ten thousand dollar slab of marble you just broke, Katerina." Elijah muses, eying her like a predator does his prey. "And you'll pay _dearly_ for every penny of it."

"Oh, I'm so scared of the big bad original." She huffs, throwing her arms up in the air as she giggles with delight. "One step near your sister and I've got you quaking in your boots, and she's not even your rea-"

The impact of Elijah's body tackling her through the wall leaves her a little more than breathless, a scream even escaping her lips as he growls with rage.

"Shut your fucking mouth, Katherine, and tell me where Brooke is!" He hollers in her face, the veins beneath his eyes raised with sheer anger as he snaps her wrist like a twig.

She howls like a wolf, gasping for air as the pain rushes through her. Although the bones heal instantly, no pity was ever given towards vampires regarding suffering.

"She's home, you bastard!" Katherine cries out as he moves for her other wrist, tears filling her eyes despite the heaping amounts of pride that tell her not to care, not to bother with the man who'd nearly had her murdered all those years before. "Your precious fucking sister is home with Stefan, playing house in _your _plantation, and she's dying, just like her damn mother did when you tried to make her forget you too!"

The words silence him, memories seeping in like delusions as he crumbles, crawling away from Katherine as she looks at him with all the hurt in world in her eyes, their vicious past coming back to them as they lay there in the ruins of his home.

_"She's carrying my sister, Katerina. I can't just leave her here, he'll slaughter the both of them just for sport."  
><em>

_"That's what this is all about, isn't it? You, Klaus, and Talia! Isn't it?"  
><em>

_"No, Katerina! It's about the fact that my father raped her, and now the woman that I once loved is carrying his daughter! A prophesized, dangerous thing to my brother, to  
><em>our _brother!"_

_"Damn you, Elijah Mikaelson! Damn you to hell for loving her more than me!"  
><em>

The words echo in his mind like faint whispers, watching the woman he had once loved - did love - more than life itself recoil from him as if he was some putrid disease that she needed to be rid of. And perhaps that was what Elijah had become after all this time: a plague upon those whom he loved.

"Just go, Elijah." Katherine whispers, the heartache in her voice so uncharacteristic that it nearly tears him apart, watching her as she rises from the rubble of the wall as if nothing at all had occurred. "Go to her, choose her, like you always do. A creature of habit, that's what you are; nothing more."

And just like that, she's gone, the whistling of the wind and slam of the door behind her all that he has left as he lays there, utterly lost and so defiantly secure at the same time. He could still smell her upon the air, the scent of roses and musk just barely hanging in the breeze as he heard her skitter away into the darkness like the wanderer she was. Chanel No. 5, he thinks to himself with a brief smile. He knows the perfume well, and it forces him to his feet as he breathes it in like a lost soul. It revives him more than the blood does, revitalizing him as he lets it seep into his bones.

He knows the perfume well, simply because he was the first one to give it to her.

Elijah calls Finn, alerting his level headed brother of the situation. They were the only two who had ever protected their sister, the other two deeming her an inbred and that she needed to be murdered for them to continue on as they had. They didn't grasp what she was, what Brooke could become if they did kill her.

They didn't understand what she could do, but they knew how powerful she could become, and because of that, they feared her.

He changes his bloody clothing and showers, scrubbing his skin clean of Katherine and all of her wiles before quietly stepping into his all black SUV, tinted windows hiding him from the bright city lights. Elijah fiddles with his fingers in the back seat of his car, his driver, Owen, not even glancing once towards the mirror as he pretends as if nothing is wrong. After being turned a hundred years ago to become his bodyguard, the well built vampire knows better than to ask his maker any inquisitive questions.

"To Master Finn's then, sir? The house in Chicago or the cottage in Providence?"

"No, Owen." Elijah murmurs as he takes one look at the skyline he's grown to love, breathing in deeply as he shuts his eyes, helping himself to one of the flasks of blood he keeps in the back for the just in case factor.

"We're going home."


End file.
